


Imperative

by orphan_account



Series: bot things [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AI AU, Broken Mycroft, Canon level deaths and violence?, Gen, I've cherry picked ACD characterizations that I prefer over BBC ones here and there, M/M, Other, Unreliable Narrator, ai eurus, ai jim, creepy robot children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-23 14:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Mycroft builds Sherlock an android named Jim. Jim falls in love with Mycroft.Mycroft rejects him, not because Jim's not human, but because he's the one who doesn't know how to love.





	1. MYCROFT

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImpishDesign](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishDesign/gifts).



Mycroft is 12 when their sister falls apart.

Sherlock and Eurus are 5 and 4 and they are playing out in the yard when childlike squeals and sounds of playfighting devolve into argument with voices filled with emotional tremors and the threat of tears. Mycroft is on the second floor of the manor at the time, reading by the window, and only vaguely interested in the happenings outside.

The heated debate grows louder until it moves into the kitchen before Mycroft finally closes his book with some grief and decides to venture downstairs.

He stops cold in the foyer.

At the bottom of the stairs, he hears their high pitched voices clearly.

"I'm not a robot!" Eurus is screaming. Mycroft knows something Sherlock doesn't.

"Victor says that's why we've never seen you cry," Sherlock says, vicious where Eurus is defensive.

Mycroft’s feet seem to understand it is imperative to physically intervene before either his mind or conscience has cottoned onto the notion.

He makes it into the kitchen just in time to see his tiny sister pick up a kitchen knife and voice his protest, but too late to stop its action.

The blade follows the path Eurus intended and embeds itself into Sherlock's left arm. Mycroft is momentarily frozen, dumbfounded as he catches the manic look on Eurus's little face.

Sherlock, too, is in a state of shock, too confusion by the happenings to register the pain and horror inflicted upon him. He's barely begun to wail when Eurus plucks the knife out, reciting as if by rote line about human pain and epidermis and blood vessels.

Then, she stabs the knife into her own left arm, holding it out as if to compare wounds. Sherlock watches with equal parts fascination and repulsion as the wound darkens and blood burbles up the same way it must have with his own arm.

Mycroft finally comes to his senses enough to rush forward and stymie the blood flow and madness of his two siblings. He wraps a towel around Sherlock's arm, sopping up the A negative being spilt to the floor. It seems the right thing to do, as such a tiny body like his can only withstand the loss of so much of it.

In retrospect, he should have disarmed his sister first.

By the time he turns around to take away the knife and clean up Eurus's mess of AB type blood, she's gone. Her eyes are wide with terror and fury as she stabs and stabs and stabs.

The initial wound had cut skin and produced blood as she expected. The second hurt. That was good. The third hit bone---and then nicked a wire. Even as a supposed 4-year-old she knew there was something underneath not meant to be there. Both Sherlock and Eurus were keen and curious creatures like a dog with a bone once a suspicious clue caught their attention.

And that wire had caught her attention. Eurus would cut cut cut away at the skin, at the flesh, at the bone, until she found what it was and pulled it out and unearthed her secret to see the light of day.

Mycroft tries to pry the knife from her hand but she has it in a vice-like grip he can't loosen. Sherlock is transfixed when she finally picks out what she's looking for from her mangled arm, and Mycroft doesn't know what else to do but to pick up his sister in his arms and run. He heads for the workshop in the garage, yelling for his dad.

  
.

  
Afterwards, Eurus is decomissioned, the trauma deemed too much for young Sherlock.

Mycroft tucks him into bed not a week after the ordeal, a week where he has been quiet and reclusive and not said more than two words to perhaps anyone but his new therapist.

He looks so sad, looking down at the duvet against his chin, that Mycroft digs deep to find some words of false comfort for his brother.

"Eurus wasn't hurt," Mycroft says.

The response is unexpected.

"Who's Eurus?" Sherlock asks, sounding quiet and sleepy, not the least sullen or scarred from the memory of her. "I've deleted that."

Mycroft stares at him, growing cold.

"You--" He doesn't know what to say.

"You're human," Mycroft says slowly. "Sherlock, you understand that right? You're human, I'm human. Mother and Father are human."

Sherlock just yawns, and burrows more deeply under his covers. Mycroft waits for several long moments before leaving and quietly closing the door behind him.

  
.

 

By the next day, it seems as if Sherlock has truly deleted his memory of his younger sister.

He is the impulsive and imaginative 5-year-old he always was, and only once in a very long while does he lose himself in an odd sort of quiet, not quite remembering, and not for very long. Certainly not long enough for Sherlock to notice, or Mycroft to question Sherlock over it.

 

.

 

Mother passed away when Sherlock was only two, and that was when Father retreated into his workshop and Mycroft saw little more of him than his hunched over back for the next year and a half.

When Mycroft is 10 he ventures into the workshop armed with his anatomy texts and mental copies of the scores and scores of parenting books packed in the attic, and walks around his father's work table to speak face to face.

"No, not a baby," Mycroft says. "Mummy would have wanted a younger sibling for Sherlock who is a companion. Someone for him to play with."

Father looks up, slowly, one pair of grey eyes meeting another.

He searches Mycroft's face and finds nothing but resolution, and nods once.

They plan for a toddler, and make blueprints and plans for her growth alongside Sherlock's.

Mycroft was the one who picked out her blood type.

 

.

 

Sherlock's brief periods of eerie stillness grow more frequent.

Mycroft makes a trip into the workshop where Sherlock is still banned and tells his father they need another one. Sherlock is a social child, and does not know how to be alone. Alone is when he is trapped within his mind, and where he becomes his own worst enemy. It's a peversion of the miracle of life, Mycroft laments, because one's mind should be one’s foremost place of solace and benediction.

"He needs another one," Mycroft says.

Father, who has been working away at spare gears and pieces for his commissions, halts.

"Fat lot of good it did him," he finally says, voice quiet and gritty from lack of use and inclination.

Mycroft shakes his head.

"Not a friend this time," he says. "An enemy."

Father looks curious.

"A barometer of sorts. To externalize his horror so not to keep it in. A bad example so he can see he must become the good. A counterpart to keep him fascinated and engaged, and work to keep the demons at bay," Mycroft explains in a rush.

Father just stares at him, perhaps thinking of the poor results of Mycroft's suggestion. But the challenge of it, or guilt, perhaps, must win out. Once again, he nods.

 

.

 

Jim, dear Jim, joins them at the dinner table when Sherlock is 10.

"You're a robot," Sherlock says.

Father, eating silently at the head of the table, says nothing, not even pausing in the partaking of his meal.

Jim just turns to the other dark-haired child with a sweet smile.

"Yes I am," he says.

Sherlock is startled by the honesty, but just as quickly accepts it. He nods, and shoots Jim curious looks all dinner, but Jim just smiles when he catches him, and offers no explanation.

"He's not eating?" Sherlock asks Mycroft.

"There's no need for it at this age," Mycroft replies. Jim will grow alongside Sherlock as well, he thinks, and at a certain point it must be able to ingest food and drink without trouble so as to blend when the need arises.

 

.

 

Jim is perfect.

He quizzes Sherlock with bizarre and baroque hypotheticals that range from space travel scenarios where they have to evade alien traffickers to the best way to break in to steal the crown jewels.

Together, they have fun. Sherlock has begun to venture ourdoors again for adventures, and to gather samples and data for his chemistry experiments. Jim not only humors him, but keeps him active and entertained.

Mycroft catches the two of them sitting in adjacent trees one day, and inadvertently meets Jim eyes. The little mechanical boy swings his legs back and forth.

"Sherlock," he says, eyes not leaving Mycroft's. "If I wanted to get rid of a child, say, a young girl, about four or five, how would I go about it?"

"Why would I want to do it?" Sherlock asks, either unbothered or unaware of Mycroft's presence, making no acknowledgment.

Mycroft doesn't hear Jim's answer, because he's already turned around to head back inside.

 

.

 

It all escalates without Mycroft’s knowing. By the time he realizes, it's too late.

Summer has come and gone and with just a bit of trouble Mycroft managed to get Jim enrolled in Sherlock's school. He realizes this means Sherlock will be unlikely to be inclined to make additional friends but does not consider it a loss because Sherlock likely wouldn't have anyway.

They fall into routines and Mycroft has his own studies and ambitions to look after.

One of those routines is breakfast, when Mycroft joins the two of them at the table after bringing his father tea and toast.

He sees Sherlock has stolen the paper this day, and holds his hand out for it. But Sherlock is too engrossed, and doesn't pay any notice.

Jim is fiddling with his plate of toast, a new fancy of his, to "have breakfast" as well, but doesn't eat it. The tiniest of smiles plays across his lips and Mycroft feels a sense of foreboding seep into the room.

"Mycroft," Sherlock says, voice excited. "Remember the swim meet that happened the same day of our school visit?"

"Hm?"

"One of the boys, one of the swimmers, it says he drowned."

Mycroft stops stirring the sugar into his tea, eyes fixed on Sherlock, whose eyes are fixed on the printed article.

"That's not true though, he didn't drown, not naturally, there's something suspicious. I think it's murder," Sherlock says, before launching into an explanation and his reasoning for it.

Mycroft isnt quite listening as his gaze slides left to rest on Jim, dear Jim, in his uniform, identical to Sherlock's, layering butter over a piece of toast he won't even be able to eat.

He catches Mycroft staring, and he smiles.

Mycroft wonders if he has miscalculated. They are equally clever and curious but Jim has all of the morbid curiosity and none of the trauma-borne caution Sherlock has, and will inevitably veer down a divergent path. He can only hope that Jim makes that fall alone, and doesn't take Sherlock along with him.

 

 


	2. MYCROFT

It was inevitable that Jim would take an interest in Mycroft Holmes, the teenger who designed his very existence.

 

Mycroft finds him sitting on the top of the steps on day, elbows on knees, face in hands, waiting. Jim turns around as he hears Mycroft approach and tells him as much.

 

"Don't you want anything from me?" Jim asks.

 

"No," Mycroft replies simply. Jim doesn't seem to find it an acceptable answer. Even narrows his eyes and glares.

 

"Engage Sherlock," Jim quotes. "Keep him entertained. Keep him busy."

 

"Utterly meaningless commands," he scoffs quietly.

 

"I am," he says, slowly, as if he'd been holding the words in for so long they'd grown heavy on his tongue, "clever."

 

"More than that, I'm intelligent; more intelligent than at least 90 percent of the people on this planet. And it is not just the crude accuracy of a calculator, no, there is also a creative license here you would find only in those fit to hold the title of genius."

 

Jim frowns at Mycroft.

 

"You made me this way, and it was no simple task. You can’t possibly think I could believe that all I’m meant to do is to play court jester to Sherlock Holmes."

 

Mycroft had known that within the first year of Jim’s existence he would question his purpose and push his boundaries. He had not expected, however, that Jim would confer with Mycroft himself about such matters. 

 

He raises an eyebrow. 

 

“I’m not sure you’re capable of belief at all.”

 

Jim looks taken aback, if only for a moment. 

 

He’s studying Mycroft’s expression, as if this is all some test, some puzzle he has to unlock in order to win the answers to his own purpose and existence. Except Mycroft’s expression gives nothing away.

 

Then, without warning, Jim hops to his feet in a cheery mood that’s a stark departure from a moment ago, and practically skips down the stairs.

 

“Sherlock!” he calls out, seemingly forgetting about Mycroft entirely. “Listen to this!”

 

Mycroft knows it’s only a matter of time before Jim does something so dangerous they have to cut ties, but he figures they still have a number of years.

 

.

 

Mycroft wakes in the middle of the night as his bedroom door cracks open and a tiny, backlit figure enters. Jim’s picked the lock.

 

He walks over to the side of Mycroft’s bed and shines a light right in his eyes, which would have startled Mycroft greatly had the door opening not woken him.

 

Mycroft squints and Jim snorts with laughter.

 

“It’s an interrogation,” he says between giggles. 

 

“It’s 2 in the morning,” Mycroft says, shielding his face with a hand.

 

Jim bounces on his toes. 

 

“Tell me all about yourself,” he says. “I know everything about Sherlock,  _ you _ told me everything about Sherlock. But he won’t talk about you, he says you’re boring.”

 

“I  _ am  _ boring,” Mycroft groans. The irony of it, he thinks, is that he once spent weeks staying up far past this hour in order to build Jim. He pruned and polish endless lines of code until he was satisfied with it. An elegant, intricate poem capable of incredible brutality. 

 

“Oh nothing that created something as brilliant as me could be boring, you can’t fool me, Mycroft Holmes,” Jim says. 

 

“You might not need sleep, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need rest,” Mycroft says, arm flung over his eyes. “You’re going to regret this in the morning.”

 

“It’s easier for me to sneak naps than other boys of my age,” Jim explains sarcastically. It’s true, though. Mycroft hadn’t thought through appropriate handicaps for the little android. He doesn’t give in.

 

“Please ask at a more appropriate hour,” he says in a groggy tone that suggests he won’t budge. Jim snaps off the flashlight.

 

“Can I stay?” he asks.

 

“No.”

 

“I’ll charge in the corner, I won’t even dig through your things.”

 

“ _ No. _ ”

 

Jim kicks Mycroft’s bed viciously before leaving the room.

 

.

 

Jim is waiting for him outside his bedroom door when he comes home from school one day, cross-legged on the floor.

 

“I don’t  _ have _ to do what you say,” Jim starts tentatively.

 

“No,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim furrows his eyebrows at that.

 

“I don’t do what you say I can’t, though,” Jim adds.

 

“That’s solely your choice,” Mycroft answers, trying to sidestep him past the doorway. Jim flops over on the ground, to make things more difficult for him. 

 

“Hmmm.”

 

“Please move.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“I’ll step on you.”

 

“Go ahead.”

 

Mycroft steps over him and carefully closes the door so as to nudge Jim out.

 

.

 

“Do you want me to make you coffee? Tea?”

 

Mycroft slowly leans out of the bathroom into the hallway, still brushing his teeth, to give Jim an odd look.

 

“No,” he says around the toothpaste foam and toothbrush.

 

Jim’s bland politeness immediately turns in a dark scowl and he runs off.

 

It doesn’t end there. Jim shows up near the door asking if Mycroft wants him to grab his coat or an umbrella or some book. He offhandedly suggests Mycroft request him to shine his shoes. Asks if he should pick up anything from the store on his way back from school. Mycroft politely declines each time.

 

“I didn’t build you to be a butler,” he finally says, before he leaves for school. 

 

“What  _ did _ you build me for, then?” Jim asks, annoyed.

 

“To entertain Sherlock,” Mycroft says, sidestepping him to get out of the house.

 

.

 

Jim starts spending a lot of time away from home. Mycroft, who is leaving for university in three weeks, does not try to deter him.

 

Without fail, when Jim returns to the manor, news of odd, unsolvable crimes follow days later in the paper, and Sherlock is busied to no end. Police in various towns around London have begun to even expect their anonymous telephone informant, though Mycroft suspects he needs to teach Sherlock to make it obvious he is not the perpetrator himself (Jim takes care of it before Mycroft can muster up the attention to).

 

"You wouldn't have anything to do with these crimes that only happen around the times when you're away, would you?" Sherlock asks drily one day at breakfast.

 

Jim crunches a spoonful of cereal between his teeth before spitting it back out.

 

"I have solid alibis for all of it, Sherlock, you know that, we've gone over every single one of them," he says, sounding wholly unbothered.

 

Sherlock gives him a suspicious, unsettled look, but can’t manage to be wholly concerned either. After all, he doesn’t want the cases to stop.

 

.

 

Mycroft feels just a twinge of guilt for leaving his traumatized and reclusive father, his ill-adjusted brother, and their little robot friend alone in a too-big house while he’s off at university.

 

He half expects it to have all burned down when he sets foot on the family property two months later for a weekend visit.

 

The house is pristine.

 

Sherlock and Jim have taken up conspiracy theories and turned every wall of their rooms into mind maps piecing together odd bits of intelligence and potential evidence, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Even their father, who still spends nearly all waking hours in the workshop, is in no worse health than when Mycroft left.

 

Mycroft stops by and learns that in addition to the prosthetics limbs he has more recently been commissioned to develop increasingly fine-tuned items. Instead of arms and legs, perhaps an eye, or nerve regenerating fingertips. In other words, he has plenty to keep him busy and alive and away from stray, unsavory thoughts.

 

He steps out of the workshop to head back into the house when Sherlock and Jim jump out at him from nowhere in an effort to startle him, and fall all over themselves laughing when they succeed.

 

“Thank you for the warm welcome,” he say drily, completely ignored as they race each other back inside.

 

.

 

It should be disturbing, Mycroft thinks, that Jim’s eyes hardly look any different when he is powered down and cracked open on the work table than they do when he is alive and awake.

 

But Jim has always been gears and code to him, so he updates the little android’s core and adjusts the length of his limbs appropriately without much feeling before sealing him up again. At school, Jim is said to eat his lunch in the infirmary because of his severe food allergies, but Mycroft has time so he makes the necessary adjustments to allow Jim to intake a meal or two a day without trouble.

 

It takes a good part of the afternoon to do, and around 3 o’clock he finds Sherlock watching from the doorway, quiet and unwilling to set foot in the workshop. 

 

“When will he be ready?” Sherlock asks.

 

“Before dinner,” Mycroft says.

 

Mycroft leaves him to charge, powered down, on the table for another two hours before starting Jim up.

 

Two hours later, he’s arguing assassination theories with Sherlock as if he were a real boy.

 

.

 

The boys are about 13 when Jim ambushes them at the breakfast table.

 

“The other boys my age are interested in sex,” Jim says, and Sherlock nearly physically recoils. Sherlock is not interested in sex, and has no wish to either discuss or engage in acts of it. 

 

Mycroft hums noncommittally. Puberty will be a tedious update, but he supposes there’s no shortcut around it. 

 

“It’s such a waste of  _ time _ ,” Sherlock protests. “It’s a waste of space in the mind completely.”

 

“How are you ever going to get along with other people if you don’t understand the things they like?” Jim asks.

 

“Why would I want to get along with other people?” Sherlock asks, as if the idea is laughable.

 

“If they like you, they’ll do what you want,” Jim says, and Sherlock glares at him, with no answer to that.

 

“And what is it you want people to do?” Sherlock finally asks.

 

“Oh, I don’t know. Open doors, fetch me the paper, that sort of thing,” Jim says easily, and Sherlock is all too happy to turn the conversation toward other topics.

 

.

 

Mycroft is still in university when he is introduced to a man who runs a department within Her Majesty’s intelligence agencies. 

 

His clearance level is relatively low, in the grand scheme of things, though undoubtedly the highest anyone his age has obtained. He is not privy to the big picture, and they are aware that he is quite capable of piecing together the big picture, but he is asked to work on many little cases that perhaps the police, domestically or internationally, are working on as well. Not to help solve them so much as to keep tabs on them, for security and intelligence purposes.

 

The boys are on a school trip abroad that week that Mycroft is keeping an eye on France. A Vermeer travelling to be put on display at a museum goes missing en route, undiscovered until an obvious fake arrives in its stead.

 

City and museum officials are trying to keep the matter quiet, but word gets out anyway.

 

Then he gets a postcard of the exact painting, postmarked from France, and there is nothing written on it except the tiny signature reading  _ Jim. _

 

Mycroft knows Jim is both clever enough to have stolen the painting and to have not come within a thousand feet of the crime but had the foresight to take credit for it in a way that will help him in a grander scheme, and is impressed that he wouldn’t trust himself to place money on either money just yet.

 

A few days later, a phone arrives in the mail, completely new except for one photograph stored in its gallery, of the painting sitting on some newspapers in, perhaps, a warehouse. Like a hostage.

 

The inclination to protect his brother by blood, by covering for Jim, duels with Mycroft’s need for a place in the world through his position in the secret service. 

 

Mycroft knows, then, that soon he will be forced to choose between his brother and his career. 

  
  
  


 


	3. MYCROFT

Mycroft writes home often, through his university years and after, requesting Sherlock’s replies and presence at the end of each letter. After nearly a decade, Mycroft can still count the number of Sherlock’s responses on one hand.

 

Mycroft’s job, however, is a great consolation.

 

He works, technically, in national security. His role is to aid in the efforts of keeping things in order, and he feels great security himself working toward what he believes is a worthwhile goal.

 

He feels more at home here, in this office, than he ever did at home. Than he can ever remember. And, once he gains the clearance, he is more than gratified that the surveillance allows him to catch glimpses of his estranged brother hopping around London.

 

So he doesn’t fault his family for their lack of contact; perhaps they feel similarly. He cares for them deeply, but he doesn’t know how to be close to them. His graduation comes and goes and he is not bothered by the fact that he attends it alone.

 

Jim, however, Jim visits. 

 

Jim shows up at Mycroft’s office the first day he’s earned his own space with a closing door, and he’s a teenager now but he’s still Jim. It makes Mycroft mourn, slightly the fact that he has been making his visits home less and less frequent as the years past, and has more or less missed Sherlock growing up entirely the past two, maybe three years. 

 

Jim, circling the office and handling every odd and end within reach, sees Mycroft studying him and smiles at him over his shoulder.

 

“Do you like it?”

 

“Father’s been keeping to regular updates then,” Mycroft says instead. 

 

Jim blinks, thinking about how to answer.

 

“No,” he says slowly. “Only when prompted. He did this yesterday.”

 

Jim holds his arms out and gives a little twirl.

 

“Two days ago, I looked 12,” he says, considering the fact for a moment, before dropping the subject, and his arms along with it. He goes back to studying Mycroft’s office.

 

“A bit boring, isn’t it?” Jim asks, gesturing to the bookshelves and binders filled with paper, taking a seat across from Mycroft at his desk. Mycroft continues to check over the ledger he’s working on, having made no attempt at hospitality. He’s accustomed to letting Jim run amok while he works.

 

“I like it,” Mycroft replies.

 

Jim shrugs, a careless expression on his face.

 

“Could’ve done something spectacular in robotics, engineering, whatnot,” Jim says with an eyebrow raise Mycroft recognizes as an expression he’s made at the boys every so often. “You know loads more about robots than I do, and I’m the actual robot.”

 

“That’s not how it works,” Mycroft says.

 

“I’ll learn, though.”

 

“If you’d like.”

 

“Yet you’re here.” Jim leans forward on the desk to poke at the papers Mycroft has been checking. “Because you don’t want to be like your father. Because you’re afraid of becoming like your father.”

 

“I think you misunderstand.”

 

“ _ I think _ it’s a waste, don’t you?” 

 

Mycroft is startled to see Jim become intensely angry only for a short moment.

 

“That I’m the only one,” Jim continues. He rubs his own hands together. “There is no one else like me.”

 

“You must have had some reason to spend so much time on me, and then never again,” Jim says. “Did I disappoint you?”

 

Mycroft looks surprised.

 

“No.”

 

Jim’s expression says he doesn’t believe him.

 

“Will you visit?” Jim asks. 

 

“I’ll try,” Mycroft lies. “How is Sherlock doing?”

 

“About the same as always,” JIm replies offhandedly.

 

.

 

The next time Jim stops by, he’s indeed learned about robotics and artificial intelligence and code.

 

“I don’t have a kill switch,” he tells Mycroft. He looks a bit baffled, a bit excited, and Mycroft isn’t so sure why.

 

“Did you really think there would be one?”

 

Jim scowls at him.

 

“I have no idea because I still can’t possibly  _ fathom _ why you would  _ make me this way _ ,” Jim says. 

 

“Sherlock is  _ frightfully _ easy to entertain,” he adds before Mycroft can answer. “I’ve even had time to start building a few...projects on the side.”

 

“I’ve noticed,” Mycroft says drily, and that gets a smile out of Jim.

 

He comes around to take a seat on Mycroft’s desk, which only serves to annoy Mycroft and get an exasperated sigh out of him. 

 

Mycroft takes stock of Jim again. His dark eyes are terribly realistic, warm even when he’s powered down, yet he’s able to make it look as if there was something dead and horrible behind them. It fascinates Mycroft because this is an extension of Jim’s personality, not the irises he chose for the boy.

 

His eyes run along Jim’s body end to end, until he reaches the designer shoes. He stifles a sigh at Jim’s growing taste in fashion and quirky spending habits, knowing that he’s clever enough to not draw suspicion.

 

“Yes, more updates,” Jim says in an indulgent tone with a smile. He pushes up a sleeve. “Would you like to examine?”

 

“No, thank you,” Mycroft says, trying to subtly move him off the desk.

 

“You practically built me from scratch. You chose my eyes, my nose, my ears and mouth, my  _ voice _ ,” Jim says, breathier as he continues. “I could hardly fault you for wanting to hold, to touch and taste.”

 

“This isn’t  _ Pygmalion _ .”

 

“It  _ could _ be.”

 

Jim finally slides off the desk but, to Mycroft’s chagrin, only so he can take a seat in Mycroft’s lap.

 

He stares deep into Mycroft’s eyes, searching,  putting his arms around his neck. Mycroft stills.

 

“I can’t  _ possibly  _ have nothing you want,” Jim says, low and frustrated, eyes dropping. 

 

Mycroft suspects that at this point, Jim really does have no end game, though it is only a matter of time. He gently removes Jim’s arms from around him.

 

“I have had sex, you know.”

 

Mycroft rolls his eyes. “Congratulations.”

 

“Everything works.”

 

“Undoubtedly.”

 

“I can even enjoy it.”

 

“That is rather the point.”

 

Jim furrows his brows. “You haven’t asked me to stop any of my less-than-legal affairs.”

 

Mycroft gives him a careful look.

 

“They’ve yet to become an issue for national security,” he says. And they keep Sherlock busy.

 

“And you haven’t asked for my help.”

 

“I’m sure I’ll manage.”

 

Jim looks utterly frustrated. 

 

“I’m  _ wasted _ on what you have me doing now,” he says ruefully, quickly intercepting Mycroft’s thoughts in the next breath. “You’re not  _ asking _ me to do anything and that’s the point!”

 

“I can predict with ease how to make Sherlock happy, as can you, you  _ know _ that as long as he has the next puzzle he’s satisfied. But you keep, you keep moving away. Just out of reach. How can I make you happy? Just tell me how,” Jim rattles on. 

 

This is not the uncharted territory Mycroft thought he would have to navigate.

 

“Why do you think you need to make me happy, Jim?”

 

“I, I want to,” Jim says, clinging onto the front of Mycroft’s shirt. He looks unsure, vulnerable. “ _ I  _ want to. And isn’t that the point? I’m, I’m just as human as Sherlock is, and I get to choose. And  _ I,  _ I  _ want _ to make you happy. I see when Sherlock is happy how it changes him, and, you’ve never let me do that. Why won’t you let me do that?”

 

He sees Mycroft’s expression change and he rips away his eyes.

 

“No, no  _ don’t  _ go thinking you need to peruse through my code because that’s not it and even if it was I  _ wouldn’t _ let you, not after all these years and not after this. There is nothing  _ wrong with me _ , I know there isn’t. I looked, I checked. I didn’t change anything, I was already this way and this way didn’t include anything about you, as if you didn’t even want to register on anyone’s radar. But I feel— you—”

 

He cuts off with a gasp, emotionally raw from the weight of his words. This is not how declarations of supposedly happy feelings are supposed to go, maybe, and Jim is not ready to face rejection. The need to express wins out.

 

“ _ Please _ , if you think anything of me—please don’t ignore my feelings for you anymore.”

 

When Mycroft lightly sets his hands over Jim’s, still gripped iron-tight over his shirt, Jim already knows what’s coming.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft says. He looks truly apologetic, even a little regretful maybe. Jim can’t stand it; he pushes himself up and quickly leaves. 

  
  
  



	4. JIM

Jim remembers opening his eyes to see a pair of cold grey eyes staring back down at him. Then there were two of them, one behind thin wire-framed lenses, with lines around them. The other young and set into a face covered with a light dusting of freckles. The mechanic and the coder. 

 

"Hello."

 

. 

 

The first few days are full of tests and full of learning. They show him images of things and ask him to tell them what he thinks. They have him pick up items and test his motor skills. There's even a vision test. The questions get more complex, as do the actions. 

 

Then there is more darkness.

 

.

 

Jim's first memory is sitting up on a stool in the workshop in the garage of the manor as if he had fallen asleep listening to Mr. Holmes discussing enamel, and as he's blinking back to consciousness he sees Mycroft Holmes carefully watching his face.

 

"Hello Jim," he says.

 

Jim flushes a bit, unused to being inspected so carefully. At least, not when he is this conscious. 

 

He knows, in theory, that he has already met these two, and that there were other conversations before this. Still, it feels like he has waited a very long time to be able to speak these words.

 

"Hello Mycroft," he tries. His voice is light, his accent different from the teenager's. He has so many things he wants to ask, and the powerful brain he's been gifted settles on one of priority importance. "Where is Sherlock Holmes?" 

 

That's the correct choice, it seems, because it makes Mycroft Holmes, the older brother of his target Sherlock Holmes, smile.

 

Mycroft stands and leads him into the house, chattering about Sherlock as they walk. Jim already knows most of these things, somehow. Perhaps they have had these conversations before. But he did not have the data of Mycroft's exact facial expressions as he explained.

 

As the seconds pass, it is as if the world sharpens and clears and Jim becomes increasingly aware of just what he is and how he is unlike anything else. He is special, and he is new. Jim is unchartered territory. He is artificial intelligence, and the only one of his kind in the world. And he has this boy beside him to thank for it.

 

He opens his mouth to say something to the effect, but is interrupted by the entrance of another boy, of similar height to Jim.

 

"Sherlock!" Mycroft says, stepping past him into the living room and leaving Jim in the doorway.

 

Jim studies them from his spot in the entrance. His creator, and the one he was created for.

 

.

 

Of course Jim has emotions.

 

This becomes evident within the first week of keeping Sherlock company, because Sherlock is so human and full of feelings that it leaves Jim with no question as to what emotions are, what it means to feel, and why that makes humans human.

 

Jim is curious by design and studies Sherlock  _ intently _ even though he feels he already knows all about him. Sherlock, he realizes, is the core template for his own personality makeup.

 

Key core traits, such as the need for identity, the penchant for romanticism and fantasy, a buried longing for affection, and an insistent curiosity about why things are the way things are create the basis for Jim as an autonomous being.

 

Then there are differences, especially in inclination. Where Sherlock might push, Jim would prefer to pull. This creates tension, Jim realizes, and keeps the dynamic interesting.

 

He likes Sherlock an awful lot, because of these little differences.

 

He looks at Sherlock and thinks, yes, I can see why we are perfectly matched. It is a grudging sort of admiration, mixed with an almost competitive need to defeat him though perhaps not immediately. It is the sort of obsessive study that comes from knowing that, if Sherlock should ever break from his role, if Sherlock were to acquiesce and forfeit the game, to bow to Jim’s superiority, Jim would hate him. 

 

Any weakness—and no,  _ no _ , Sherlock’s delicious vulnerability is not a weakness—would only reflect something similar but not quite the same in Jim himself. The thought is repulsive.

 

Mycroft Holmes, on the other hand, is not quite right. If Jim didn’t know better, he would have thought perhaps Mycroft was the one who was not fully human.

 

Father, Mr. Holmes, is quiet but only because he is shrouded in grief. Sherlock is equal parts vibrant and melancholy and has a mind that is never quiet.

 

Mycroft goes through the motions of life wholly unbothered, and Jim has to wonder why he even lives. There is no joy, no pain, no regret. There is neither hope nor despair. The only time Jim has ever seen a semblance of emotion from Mycroft is when Mycroft looks at Sherlock, and pretends to be happy.

 

.

 

“Let’s play a game,” Sherlock says. He’s carting over a big chess board, wood with polished wooden pieces. Jim knows how to play, because Mycroft has taught Sherlock how to play. 

 

“Alright,” Jim says as Sherlock sets the board down between them, divvying up the pieces.

 

“Not just chess though, but it has to be a story as well. See, if you move your knight,” Sherlock explains, demonstrating as he sets up the board, “you’ve got to make it make sense within the story as well. Like the brave lone soldier setting off to investigate something suspicious at the border. Or the evil king moving his pawn forward to do his nefarious deeds.”

 

Jim studies the board, considering. 

 

“Okay.”

 

.

 

The dragon vs space pirates narrative results in a fistfight wherein Sherlock ends up needing stitches and Jim’s elbow needs repairs, and new rules are put in place.

 

.

 

Once they go back to school, once he meets other children, he understands a little bit why Mycroft is so protective of Sherlock. 

 

Sherlock is gun shy, and terrified of rejection. Jim understands why, technically, though he doesn’t much care, because it doesn’t affect anything. Time is all Sherlock needs to come to terms with his past traumas, and he has Jim to keep him company in the meantime. He thinks Mycroft’s worrying is for naught.

 

Jim thinks this is also because he has grown bored with the confines of his role and just a bit resentful that he was made to engage one person when there is a world of 7 billion minds. He is only barely resentful, though, because Sherlock’s mind is bounds beyond most. 

 

It still doesn’t mean he has to confine himself to Sherlock’s schedule. So Jim goes exploring.

 

.

 

Jim visits the boys’ father without their knowledge, stands by the workshop table for several long minutes before the man finally speaks to him.

 

“Do you need repairs?” he asks.

 

Jim shakes his head. 

 

“Just watching.”

 

The man nods once and continues to work, paying Jim little heed, not even when he drags a stool closer and takes a seat. Father is building a prosthetic eye with a blue-green iris and flecks of golden brown around the edges. 

 

He’s nearly done when he finally speaks.

 

“There was another one, before you,” he says. His voice is not what Jim expected. It’s clear and precise, neither unsure not dusty from disuse. Jim looks up at him.

 

“Eurus.”

 

He doesn’t elaborate, so Jim doesn’t push. Perhaps he is distracted by the fine-mechanical work.

 

“We created her, Mycroft and I, as a sister for Sherlock. It didn’t work well,” he muses. “Perhaps you will be better.”

 

Jim smiles at him. It’s always fascinating how his creators are so frank with him. He thinks that perhaps he may never be really human, because the Holmeses themselves are not quite normal (Sherlock is the closest) and they have been a tremendous influence. He’s not sure how he feels about it.

 

.

 

Of all the Holmeses, Sherlock is fondest of the natural world, Jim thinks, of organic sciences, though they are all scientists. The father is a builder and an artist. The older brother is constantly dissecting the mind. And Sherlock has a fascination with what life gets up to when no one is looking. He likes organic chemistry.

 

This means they often forage through the woods for new and unique samples. For some reason, Sherlock likes dirt, and the worlds contained in these little unnoticed specks that follow us around after our footsteps. 

 

Sometimes Jim will take samples too, pocketing this or that plant.

 

.

 

School is twice as rowdy one day and Jim sees that it’s because students from another school have come for some sports competition or another. He’s looking for Sherlock and can’t find him, ending up circling school grounds until he hears the sound of voices, cheers behind the gym.

 

Not cheers, jeers, he realizes as he gets closer.

 

He watches for a few moments as three boys, not students at their school, shove Sherlock back and forth. They call him a few slurs, Sherlock bitingly insults their intelligence right back, and gets knocked to the ground for it. 

 

They get in a few kicks, but seem to lose interest once Sherlock curls up into a ball and refuses to engage. Jim watches from around the corner, and none of them see him. One of the boys finishes off with a kick to Sherlock’s gut and they walk off. He’s a swimmer, here for the meet. Then they walk off.

 

Jim sighs, not caring if someone hears him now, though no one does. If he goes over now, he’ll just have to deal with a sulky and hurt Sherlock. He turns around and heads back into the school instead. 

 

The acoustics of the gym building make is so that from this stretch of the hallway, Jim can conversation taking place in the locker rooms loud and clear. They’re laughing at something that doesn’t actually sound all that funny, and Jim gets the fun idea to give them something to really laugh at. 

 

The chemistry lab is not far, and he should be able to make it back in time for the second half of the swim meet.

 

.

 

By the end of that first year, Jim’s figured it all out.

 

Mycroft Holmes thinks he is so invested in Sherlock’s happiness because he loves Sherlock and simultaneously wants to placate his guilt and create a happier life for Sherlock. But that is only because Mycroft Holmes doesn’t want to admit, or perhaps is not even aware, that he has no real concept of happiness, yet holds out for the hope that if he can heal and create happiness for a child as isolated and damaged as Sherlock, perhaps he can learn to heal himself.

 

It makes Jim’s chest ache, right at the center of it, where his heart would be if he had a heart.

 

He tries very hard not to think about it. 

 

.

 

Sherlock Holmes has gotten taller, and Jim has not.

 

Mycroft notices this as well, so a week later they go into the workshop, and Jim wakes up in a body that is slightly new.

 

“He’ll need changes more frequently over the next few years, but then it should hold for a while,” one of them says. Jim’s not quite sure who just yet.

 

.

 

The updates become more frequent, though irregularly, because human growth is irregular, and Jim takes an interest in the human body he hadn’t before.

 

Sherlock too, though his interest doesn’t extend beyond the anatomy books and medical texts he’s been absorbing, while Jim wants more than that.

 

Then Mycroft stops coming home, and Father forgets about Jim.

.

 

Mycroft writes, often, but never to Jim. He writes to Sherlock and occasionally includes messages to be relayed to Father, but he never mentions or asks about Jim.

 

It’s hurtful, because it makes Jim worry he’s failed to make an impression on Mycroft Holmes.

 

In sorting through his own store of data, Jim comes to realize that he has nearly just as much information on Mycroft as he does Sherlock, except Sherlock’s was freely given without Jim’s ever even asking, while each and every little data point Jim has on Mycroft has been foraged and fought for. 

 

He knows exactly how to handle Sherlock, but he wouldn’t know where to begin to make Mycroft happy. Over the years, he’s failed again and again at engaging him. 

 

It’s hurtful, but Jim holds on to and cherishes this feeling and his ability to have it and he realizes this makes Mycroft special.

 

At the beginning, he wondered whether it was simple imprinting, whether this preoccupation came because Mycroft had a hand in creating Jim himself. But then he rules it out after several experiments, concluding it’s not the case. He never had the desire to follow Mycroft around or cling to him like film. But when he is around, there is a light and warm in his chest. And it is not that Mycroft’s feelings influence his, because Mycroft hardly seems to have feelings. 

 

Jim reads classics and poetry and laughs at the fact that he as artificial intelligence is more interested in love, the emotion that’s baffled and broadened and damned humanity through the ages, than Mycroft is. He folds up this feeling and tucks it away until he realizes he doesn’t want to idealize a vision of Mycroft that isn’t truly him, and idealize it forever. He has to see him and offer up these feelings and then whether Mycroft accepts or rejects them, he will be able to move forward onto the next stage.

 

.

 

Jim doesn’t realize he has to account for the dizzying happiness he feels seeing Mycroft again, at his office, at his new position as some sort of spook for the government. 

 

Mycroft seems well, and well settled into the place. He’s not quite happy, but perhaps he is closer to it here than he ever was at home, and it nearly distracts Jim from what he was about to say. Then Mycroft asks about Sherlock, and Jim is disappointed and leaves sooner than he planned. 

 

.

 

Jim presses up against Robert but turns his face away when he tries to kiss Jim. Carrie, when he’d done this with her, told him first kisses were special and though he knows they’re technically not, he decides to honor this particular sentiment. Instead, they explored with hands and little nips against the skin and then Jim crawled down to between her legs and she laughed tossing her skirt over him, gasping moments later. With Robert it goes quicker, they’re rutting against each other and it’s over before they’ve even gotten their clothes off.

 

There’s a bone-deep sense of relaxation afterwards and a need to be close, and Jim always simultaneously feels the desire to hold them close and play with their hair, and the sense that he is utterly alone.

 

Sherlock is dismissive of these findings when he shares them later, but Jim supposes that for someone like Sherlock that’s just fine. Mycroft is gone, at university, so Jim hasn’t had a chance to ask him. He thinks perhaps Mycroft is not so sentimental so as to try to save his first kiss for someone special.

 

Jim’s electronic neurochemistry is not so different from the organic deal, Jim discovers, as he pokes and prods at the elegant code Mycroft constructed. It occurs to him that if Mycroft wrote all this, wrote volumes and volumes of behavior just for him, then perhaps by reading through it he can get a better read on Mycroft. Except what he finds is a detached and disinterested author who has created a structurally perfect product for one very simple purpose. He learns no more from reading this than he has trying to pry answers out of the man himself.

 

He visits again.

 

.

 

“I don’t have a kill switch,” he tells Mycroft, letting him know he’s gone through all of his own programing himself. Mycroft is obsessed with things being in order, and Jim was sure there would be something like a kill switch, but there wasn’t even a hint.

 

Mycroft looks confused that Jim would even think there was one, ruling out the hypothesis that there was one and Jim just couldn’t find it. Mycroft has never found Jim worth lying to. (Jim takes solace in the fact that perhaps Jim is the only one Mycroft doesn’t bother lying to.)

 

He ends up sulking about Mycroft’s lack of answers (attention) and getting distracted from why he’s come here. By the time he’s gotten back on track the mood’s not quite right but he’s so tired of waiting on this alone that he pushes forward with it.

 

He doesn’t quite get the words out, but Mycroft gets the picture.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Jim’s eyes sting. He didn’t think it would hurt  _ this _ much. He didn’t think it was possible for him to hurt this much at  _ all. _

 

.

 

He can’t bring himself to visit again, but when he and Sherlock are meant to apply to universities (Mycroft has written Sherlock even more frequently than usual, about the topic), Jim decides he needs a change of scenery. 

 

Jim doesn’t visit, but he writes to Mycroft letting him know he won’t be attending university with Sherlock. The letter is brief and to the point. His message to Sherlock is brief and to the point as well.

 

Sherlock is momentarily taken aback, having grown used to Jim being around. Having taken it for granted. But he shrugs and wishes Jim well, and perhaps neither brother thought Jim meant he would go dark completely, perhaps they thought he only meant to travel or work or play while Sherlock was at school, but for the next fours years, Jim is impossible to find.

  
  



	5. MYCROFT

 

Neither of them realized how much damage Jim’s absence would cause.

 

Sherlock, having had his self-imposed social isolation enabled, having had every instance of boredom resolved on demand, has no idea how to sustain himself and his never-quiet mind without his life-long friend and rival in every task.

 

Mycroft realizes this when Sherlock’s grades start to slip, as they were apt to because no matter how interesting the subject was Sherlock was bound to get tired of the routine of class and classwork, they only continue to fall during his first year at university. Every other time, Jim would beat Sherlock with a more brilliant project or thesis and reinspire the younger brother to engage in his formal studies. 

 

The first year comes and goes, and Mycroft makes sure to send books and articles and interesting experts Sherlock’s way, in hopes of keeping him interested in at least certain classes. He has strings pulled to allow Sherlock to enroll in certain lectures usually only privy to graduate students, and to allow him to skip classes that no doubt would have bored Sherlock to tears had he deigned to attend and pulled down his grade average.

 

His little tricks are less effective the second year, when Sherlock makes a game of not just ignoring Mycroft but playing hide and seek from Mycroft and those he sends, making it incredibly difficult for anyone to get ahold of him, much less knock some sense into him.

 

It would have been fine had Sherlock merely been slacking off those months, but he had instead slaved away in chemistry labs away from school. 

 

In his third year, Mycroft catches wind of Sherlock sighted in some unsavory neighborhood and building, and upon investigation finds his brother high as a kite, physically strung out and looking as if on death’s doorstep. Sherlock insists he isn’t an addict, that he has researched safe usage, but his words are barely coming together and Mycroft realizes he has been terribly negligent.

 

He hopes, he  _ prays _ , that he hadn’t looked harder because he truly believed the situation was less dire than it is—and not because he was too fearful of what he might find and too protective of his own solitude to try much harder to search out his brother.

 

Mycroft monitors diligently now, but it’s not enough. Three months later, Sherlock overdoses in a friend’s dorm room, and Mycroft has no choice but to send him to a private rehabilitation center.

 

It doesn’t occur to him to inform their father.

 

.

 

Mycroft doesn’t fault Jim for this; he realizes the blame falls squarely on himself. So he doesn’t seek Jim out, not to ask for his return, nor to update him on Sherlock. Jim is neither a last resort nor an essential part of this formula.

 

Sherlock was never meant to be alone; Sherlock cannot cope with being alone. This much is clear to Mycroft. It was why, in absence of offering his own support and company, he sent not replacements of proxies, he sent Sherlock solutions designed specifically for him.

 

Eurus was a failure, as was Jim, it seems. Mycroft isn’t chancing a third time, lucky or not. He has seen his own faults—he is not omnipotent. He cannot design someone perfect, someone to complement Sherlock’s every jagged line and edge. 

 

He needs to send Sherlock someone real.

 

.

 

Of all the games Sherlock and Jim played, Sherlock was most engrossed when unraveling the tales Jim spun and knots Jim tied. Sherlock was at his best and brightest when solving crimes, doing the work of a detective.

 

So while Sherlock is recovering in rehab, Mycroft goes and finds himself a detective.

 

He has assistants pull resumes and files from the Yard and for all intents and purposes it looks like he is recruiting security detail. He’s not. He is looking for an individual clever enough to recognize Sherlock’s brilliance and  _ kind  _ enough—not eccentric, this time, and not similarly genius so as to not mind the quirks, but  _ compassionate, understanding— _ to lead Sherlock on the path of the upright. 

 

He wants Sherlock to become a good man.

 

.

 

Mycroft ends up narrowing the list down to three; a detective inspector and two sergeants. 

 

One is a bit more frank than he thinks polite, but perhaps instead of butting heads with Sherlock their mutual honesty will only further bond them. Another is a decent detective with a pleasant demeanor, but Mycroft worries Sherlock will find his patient nature daft instead and cause a rift. The third is, underneath the charming veneer, apt to go off the books and follow his gut, which Sherlock would respect but the two of them together could end up getting into more trouble than Mycroft was willing to risk.

 

But, those were all hypotheticals. On the other hand, each one of these detectives could potentially inspire Sherlock to action once again. Offer understanding instead of concessions. Nurture the long-neglected emotions his brother harbored, and allow Sherlock to grow.

 

So Mycroft follows each one at various intervals for nearly two weeks, observing how they handle situations, how they speak to their superiors versus their subordinates, how they break hard news to families on the job, and how they handle difficult conversations off the job.

 

On Thursday morning Mycroft is sitting in the back of a bus he would otherwise never take, watching one of the detectives take his young son to school. He watches the boy trip and throw a fit, using anger to cover up his hurt and pushing his father away instead of receiving his help.

 

He watches the man bend down and gently coax the boy into acceptance—of his own hurt and tears, of the situation, of help—and to come across on the other side a more learned and wiser person. Mycroft understands the moment itself is perhaps not that profound, but it resonates so clearly with what he was unable to do for Sherlock at that age that he can’t help but make up his mind that very moment.

 

He checks the files he had the assistants compile, and contemplates his next move.

 

  1. Lestrade.



 

Married, with one young son, and a rising star of a detective. 

 

.

 

Over the next handful of months, Mycroft keeps the occasional detail on Lestrade and puts the occasional plant his way, nudging the detective into place so that when Sherlock is ready to re-enter the world, they both have space in their lives for each other.

 

And though Mycroft’s intentions are benign, his methods are not.

 

Lestrade’s wife brings up the idea of a second child and, upon the man’s happy agreement, Mycroft realizes he needs to interfere. A baby on the way while Sherlock is at his most testy and alone will make things difficult, so Mycroft begins to look for any hairline cracks in the marriage that he can exacerbate into rifts.

 

They are little things, but insidious enough. Lestrade misses an important date because of work. His wife gets a phone call confirming a dinner reservation moved an hour earlier than the couple had planned, while Lestrade gets no such notification, leaving her to stew in the restaurant alone while he is stuck somewhere without cell reception.

 

The marriage doesn’t break, but the instances are enough that the pile up into something that results in each casting a less than loving eye on the partner when their backs are turned. Worry, on the verge of regret, and a sense of loneliness.

 

Mycroft predicts the sentiment will erode away at the mutual trust so slowly neither realizes it is happening until it becomes too late. They won’t hate each other so much as drift apart, and settle for being just a bit alone. And without the second child to nurture, the detective will take kindly to Sherlock. And the wife, well, she isn’t really Mycroft’s concern.

 

.

 

Lestrade stumbles into Sherlock on the verge of a relapse and Mycroft feels like he’s finally released a breath he’s been holding for a very long time.

 

As first meetings go, it’s real and visceral and it is hard to watch. But this is not something Mycroft can delegate, not when the variables are all so out of his control.

 

But then, as predicted, Sherlock wows the detective with his powers of observation and deductive reasoning and Lestrade stuns the recovering junkie with his stern but understanding nature.

 

They work well together, and on it goes. 

 

They dance around each other, as time goes by, and each time Lestrade is able to pull Sherlock over from the edge just in time—but ‘just in time’ never ceases to be risky. There is an underlying sentiment there that Sherlock doesn’t quite understand yet, and so it doesn’t quite take.

 

Mycroft starts to notice that between the two there could be more, if Sherlock weren’t so volatile and inexperienced, and Lestrade weren’t still beating himself up over his failing, failed, marriage. There will always be a chasm between the two, and there will always be aches and lonely questions Sherlock will carry within him that Lestrade cannot heal or answer.

 

And, by now, Mycroft has moved up quite far. Far enough that his past indiscretions with his unsanctioned surveillance and whatnot are now ones he can very much write off. 

 

He nearly laughs. He can protect the country from a hundred different threats, but he can’t protect his brother from his own heart.

 

.

 

Against his better judgement, Mycroft begins to search for yet another person to nudge into Sherlock’s path. 

 

Perhaps a doctor, Mycroft thinks, or one of the hospital staff. 

 

He is still considering and in the preliminary rounds of screening candidates when Sherlock waltzes into the hospital’s morgue one day, and waltzes back out with a new flatmate.

 

Mycroft watches, startled and unsure, at first. He even makes contact, without his brother’s knowledge.

 

By the end of the night, he’s come to a conclusion.

 

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are very well matched. John is everything Jim wasn’t. 

 

Mycroft hopes it takes.

  
  
  
  



	6. SHERLOCK

Sherlock Holmes is examining evidence under the microscope, in the lowest floor of the hospital building, when fate careens through the doorway and catches him off guard.

 

Molly Hooper and Mike Stamford he’s familiar with; they are quirky, affable people who tolerate his obstinacy and offstandishness and for that he is grateful but will never acknowledge or show it. But this third man is new, and startlingly normal. A discharged soldier.

 

Curious, he lets his mouth lead his mind and rattles off a series of facts he’s deduced about the man’s life—and is quite pleased with the agreeable response he gets in return. 

 

Few people respond so good humoredly to Sherlock, and so the young man, emotion blooming in his chest, turns to nod at Stamford, just once, just barely, for having brought such a suitable flatmate to his notice. 

 

Sherlock thinks—but more than that, he  _ hopes _ —that he and John Watson will get along.

 

.

 

Sherlock lies, still. In these moments he imagines he is detaching his mind from his body and it is in these moments that he does his most important work. All of the most important work is confined to the mind. The body is merely...an add on. Useful for obtaining evidence when used correctly. Useful for confirming what his mind has already determined. That does have a sort of rush, all of its own.

 

And it’s that rush that this new John Watson so craves. He wants that adrenaline rush. Oh, that Sherlock can provide. It’s what he’s been chasing his whole life. The next one, the next one, the next one.

 

That automatically sets John, Dr. Watson, apart from the others in his life. Molly Hooper, Mrs. Hudson, even Lestrade—they are all people in his circle. People who care about him. But he doesn’t know how to deal with that. He’s not sure what it all means. He’s afraid that one day they will want something he cannot give, 

 

and then they will leave.

 

Like Mother, perhaps. Amd Father, in his own way. Like Mycroft. Like Jim. And there are others, that he cannot remember.

 

and then where would he be?

 

They are uncertainties he will not engage or risk. 

 

But John, Captain Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, is not looking for more. He needs a place to live, superficially. He also needs a distraction, emotionally and mentally, and thus is game to tolerate most of Sherlock’s antics. 

 

Sherlock hands John his phone back. 

 

He thinks they will get along fine.

 

.

 

The case Sherlock has been working on, the serial killer he has been chasing, is a strange and oddly evocative one that can only mean one thing:

 

Jim is back.

 

Sherlock grew up with the little android so close by his side that he hadn’t realized what it would be like when he was finally gone. It was like waking up one day an amputee, and remembering that the limb was severed several years ago, then going about your day experiencing phantom sensations.

 

It took quite a long while for those sensations to fade.

  
Sherlock did not miss Jim, per se, not the way you might miss a friend, he thinks. But he realized years down the road that he could not quite function without him.

 

And it seemed Jim could not function without Sherlock either, because after university, after rehab, after he’d taken up helping Scotland Yard close cases they couldn’t quite wrap their heads around, interesting clues began to pop up.

 

It was a murder here, a theft-gone-wrong there, and so on. The crimes committed were marked by no one signature, but each exhibited a bit of flair that Sherlock hadn’t seen since grade school. Each involved a seemingly careless homicide that brought the cases Sherlock’s way.

 

And none so odd and  _ interesting _ as this recent string of alleged suicides. No apparently link, no apparent motive. It’s a clever puzzle, he just knows it. Sherlock’s blood is thrumming with excitement.

 

“Sherlock!” Lestrade hisses, pulling him aside, in a dim alcove where Anderson and the others cannot see, and Mrs. Hudson, the well meaning but old gossip, cannot hear. “People have  _ died. _ ”

 

“So you keep saying,” Sherlock murmurs. And he does. He keeps doing that, keeps reminding Sherlock that there are dead people. All the time. Of course there are dead people. He works  _ homicide.  _

 

But he keeps having to remind Sherlock, like it’s something Sherlock doesn’t get. 

 

It’s true. He isn’t quite getting it. Sherlock doesn’t quite have the right response to death.

 

He’s not sure why.

 

Before he can fully process it, before he can feel it, he always just sort of…

 

Blocks it. 

 

He can’t quite connect, for some lost and obscured reason he can’t quite remember.

 

But that’s probably also why he is so unbelievably drawn to it.

 

.

 

He is drawn to it like a moth to flame, he knows it, he knows he’s doing something utterly dangerous when he gets into that cab, alone, and lets the driver take him who knows where.

 

But there is nothing in his mind except for the game right now. No people, no precautions, no tomorrow.

 

Just this moment, and this puzzle.

 

He solves it all and lets the cabbie take him to an emptied building, and when the killer gives him the choice to play, there is no doubt and no reservation in his soul at all. He takes one of the pills.

 

He almost believes he has nothing to lose.

 

The cabbie goads him, and he lets it happen, even as his mind is frantically trying to work out what the trick is, 

 

—when something  _ cracks! _ through the window.

 

Sherlock whips his head around to see that John, steadfast John, it  _ must _ be, has woken him from his stupor. 

 

The cabbie is bleeding out on the floor and Sherlock sees at once that it was just a dirty trick, not clever at all (clever enough to lure him out), and now he is fast dying.

 

But Sherlock won’t let him go without some answers. He presses his foot into the wound and demands, again, to know the name of his sponsor.

 

“Moriarty!” he finally croaks out.

 

Sherlock stops.

 

It’s not a name he’s heard before.

 

It’s not who he thought.

 

Was Jim really gone? (Could Moriarty become his new adversary?)

 

He leaves the building with more questions than he’d like, into the sirens and lights-filled night. Lestrade is there, as are his lackeys, and then there is John.

 

The adrenaline is still coursing through his veins, as it must be for John. Tonight is a good night, Sherlock decides, and they really will get along fine.

 

The pair of them are about to leave when he turns on his heel only to come facing a face he hasn’t seen in seven years. 

 

“There, that’s the man I met tonight,” John tells him. He’d said something about an abduction earlier, Sherlock remembers, but they were interrupted by a routine drugs bust, and anyway it hadn’t been important then. 

 

“Mycroft,” Sherlock greets, voice colored with apathy and an undercurrent of contempt to mask nervousness.

 

Mycroft's gaze sweeps over him, and Sherlock knows any questions he might ask now will only be superficial. He already has the answers he wants (How has Sherlock been? What happened in that building? What is John Watson’s influence on him? Did he find Jim?). 

 

It still unnerves Sherlock, when he does that.

 

They trade barbs briefly and Mycroft admonishes Sherlock for not keeping in touch and Sherlock plays it off like he is an annoying older brother who frets, and not the utterly unnerving  _ being _ that he is, overlooking everything from afar and withholding his affections simply because he  _ can. _

 

He rushes to leave, new flatmate and conspirator in tow.

 

Tonight will still be a good night, Sherlock is determined for it. 

 

.

 

Sherlock is wrong about John Watson.

 

John is...not just looking to be entertained. He does more than solidly plod ahead as his own person—he takes an interest in Sherlock as a person.

 

It's strange.

 

“Did you eat yet?”

 

John stands, head turned toward Sherlock expectantly, and it takes Sherlock several moments before he realizes that John is not in fact talking aloud to himself (completely reasonable assumption, Sherlock does that himself all the time).

 

“What?” Sherlock asks. “I wasn’t listening.”

 

John’s sigh is more incredulous and amused than exasperated and annoyed. 

 

“Mrs. Hudson’s already put the kettle on, and I’m making toast. I’ll just make you some too then, yeah?”

 

Sherlock doesn’t understand. He wants a case, not toast. Then when he’s working, it won’t matter if he’s forgotten to eat because he doesn’t eat while working anyway.

 

.

 

“Are you alright?” 

 

Sherlock stops his questioning mid-question. His eyes slide off the client, sitting in the chair in the center of the living room, and onto John Watson, sitting across from Sherlock. John is leaning forward in his chair, toward the client, a sympathetic look on his face.

 

A series of dancing men had turned up on the young, recently-married woman’s door, suggesting something of her sordid past catching up with her. Sherlock had been interested in the code—the dancing figures were a message, and one he had no doubt he could crack. She had been stammering bits of the tale here and there and from what Sherlock had understood of it, someone was going to get killed. But who? And why?

 

The woman, eyes rimmed with red, had told them she could not tell them about her past, and would not tell her husband. She had wondered if the detective could puzzle out the mystery villain without such clues.

 

“I—yes, it’s a fright, but, yes. Thank you,” she says, and John smiles kindly at her. She smiles back. Sherlock supposes it would be quite off putting if he were to smile now.

 

From there on, the woman tells her story and situation more freely. 

 

Sherlock agrees to take the case, and requests to visit their home so as to inspect the coded message in person.

 

.

 

A rather high profile figure turns up not long after that. But in disguise. 

 

The man is Danish nobility, though Sherlock could care less. A woman is in possession of some incriminating photo of the two of them, and he would like it retrieved. Sherlock is not a private investigator, and he does not take cases like these.

 

“She does not want anything,” the prince, soon-to-be king says. “But she won’t give up the photo.”

 

That does intrigue Sherlock, and he agrees to look into the matter, if only to satisfy his own curiosity and perhaps prove the prince wrong. Everyone wants something from other people. He would like to determine what it is Irene Adler wants.

 

.

 

After two days and two disguises, John suggests that perhaps Sherlock is enamored with Ms. Adler. Sherlock’s face and suggests he has never heard such a preposterous thing.

 

But he does respect her. That is for certain. 

 

She bests him, not once but twice, and it soon becomes quite clear what she really wants.

 

Irene Adler just wants to pursue love, and be free to live her own life. The photograph she has kept was half memory half insurance, as it became clear that what the  _ prince _ wanted was to retain control over their relationship, though it had ended.

 

And what a novel idea, to be free, and happy.

 

Sherlock looks upon the happy woman and her companion from the airport entrance as they rise up the escalator to go through their gate. He wonders how much of that freedom and happiness has relied on her choice of companions. 

 

The woman returns the photograph, and the prince, relieved now, offers generous payment. Sherlock tells John he cannot take this money, because he doesn't well feel like speaking to this prince, and because he was beaten by the woman fair and square.

 

He does, however, request to keep her photograph

 

and tucks it away in a drawer where he knows it is safe though he does not ever take it out or look at it.

 

It gives him hope.

 

.

 

A phone call comes for Sherlock that doesn't interest him at all.

 

_ Sherlock. _

 

It's his brother's voice playing in a voicemail. Sherlock has refused to even look at it so John is playing it, on speakerphone.

 

_ Father has passed away. Burial and estate arrangements have been taken care of. I am forwarding you funeral details. A lawyer may come by to request your signature on several documents. Please do not hesitate to reach out for my assistance. _

 

John is still and quiet long after the message has finished playing. Finally he asks,

 

“Sherlock, I'm sorry.”

 

He doesn't respond.

 

“Were you close?”

 

Mycroft? Or Father?

 

“No.”

 

“Are you going?” 

 

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. John can be surprisingly frank, and observant about certain human things regarding Sherlock.

 

“No.”

 

He fires a text off to Mycroft.

 

_ I don't want any of it. Call off your lawyers. I'll send you a scrap paper with my signature though no doubt you'd be able to forge it without. SH _

 

.

 

A phone comes for Sherlock that interests him immensely.

 

It comes in an unmarked box, and the phone is clean. Nearly factory setting except for one addition. 

 

An audio file with five pips.

 

“What does it mean?” John asks.

 

His blood thrums, and his every cell resonates at the frequency of excitement. 

 

“It means, John, that the game is on.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim next, and then back to Mycroft! Because their story demands resolution.


	7. JIM

  
  


Jim’s confession was not an easy one to make, and once he’s cleared his head and feels more numb than full of hurt and rage and flames, he realizes he needs to leave.

 

He knows, somehow, that he’s not supposed to push other people. If Mycroft does not want him, he will not stay. He doesn’t see the point of suffering that unhappiness alone, and wants to get over this heartbreak as soon as possible.

 

It’s not that Jim has never been on his own, but in the subsequent years he decidedly feels like he is on his own. He answers to no one but himself, and the Holmeses are none of his concern. 

 

But for someone who was designed to be a counterpart—being alone—he’s miserable.

 

The misery doesn’t set in as quickly as the boredom, and when the boredom comes he resort to what he does best—embellishing mysteries, typically in the form of crimes. Basic human wants and needs are universal and Jim does not need to be anywhere near London in order to exploit those wants and needs and sniff out desperation and use it to paint a masterpiece.

 

He tries out a variety of relationships for size. There’s a mob princess he seduces by wearing his heart on his sleeve, dripping poetry from his tongue, and they relish in the crash-and-burn intensity of freefalling in each others’ arms. There’s a rising star of a scientist that loves how viciously clever he is, and enjoys the thrill of Jim’s unpredictability but can’t muster up the balls to ask or initiate anything he really likes himself.

 

Jim learns that he likes playing the part, that he gets lost in it, that he often starts to mistake the character’s preferences for his own. 

 

But—enjoyable as parts of these little experiments are—and the end of the day it just leaves him feeling empty. He had thought, when he started, that the odd nature of his conception and subsequent upbringing might have ruined him for the quote-unquote real world, but that’s not it at all; desires are universal and he often meets the same ones falling into bed with a nice receptionist as he does on the in the hearts of the seedy underbelly of society. 

 

Something is missing, and he’s always known what it was.

 

Circling the world and riding high on the interlocking web of crime is only entertaining for so long. After a few years, Jim gives in to the tugging of nostalgia and sets up shop in London. Not to make contact. Just to keep an eye on things.

  
He’s been going by a new name now, and is quite certain none of the Holmeses have been able to pin him down. Which is the way he wants it. 

 

He takes the opportunity to see what each brother is up to. 

 

Sherlock is doing well, but he wasn’t until recently. He’s taken up crime-solving again, and doesn’t that just make Jim completely nostalgic.

 

Mycroft is doing….less well. Not well at all. Utterly reclusive, unwilling to even make contact with Sherlock, the brother he loves so dearly, so much.

 

There’s that horrible tightness again, and old feelings flood back. 

 

Jim gnaws his lip and hems and haws but he knows he’s going to do it. He’s going to make contact.

 

Just one last game, he thinks, one last round, and he’ll make it a great one.

 

Jim needs Sherlock. Without Sherlock to unravel the tales he spins and piece together the puzzles he’s designed his genius goes unapplauded, his work unappreciated. Motivation stagnates.

 

Jim needs Sherlock, yes, but he’s not the one whos plagued his mind all these years no matter how close or far he’s been from London. Jim needs Sherlock but he  _ wants Mycroft _ . Mycroft, who sometimes it feels like has never given him even the time of day, though that is completely untrue because he gave Jim his first set of everything. Mycroft, who has wanted absolutely nothing from Jim, not in words nor actions. Mycroft may very well need nothing from Jim, Jim doesn’t know, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting him any less. It takes everything he has to not walk right back to him.

 

.

 

Jim handpicks a desperate, dying dullard who is not afraid to kill, even has a bit of a craving for it. He supplies the man, through a proxy, with an esoteric enough poison that Sherlock will no doubt take interest to, and instructs him to play a little game.

 

And then he sits back and waits. 

 

It’s as good as a signed invitation, and Sherlock is sure to understand he is back in town and back on the field. He waits, a bit, before sending the next piece of the puzzle. Just a way for them to keep in touch.

 

He flips lazily through his rolodex of operations and selects a few he thinks varied and interesting enough to keep Sherlock on his toes and keep him guessing until the last minute. He picks a time where Mycroft is otherwise preoccupied, at the dentist of all things, to prolong the game and up the stakes. It’s a bit risky, this. He gets closer to exposing his name, becoming a little more than just a whisper and a rumor, becoming a little too real.

 

But it’s alright. It’s time.

 

Jim visits a storage locker he’s owned under an alias since Sherlock’s school years, and heads toward the back. He removes the dust cover from a shelf and snaps on some gloves, though he doesn’t really need them. Then, he puts the pair of trainers, old but well-kept, into a duffle bag.

 

.

 

Jim decides to go all out for this one, breaking out the fireworks and explosions, hijacking a fantastically high profile gallery opening with the  _ teensiest _ bit of vandalism.

 

Then he sits back and watches with a smile on his face as Sherlock Holmes races all over London, chasing a high he hasn’t been able to feel since Jim left. 

 

It is good to feel wanted for doing what you’re best at, after all.

 

It’s even fun, as Jim raises the stakes match after match. 

 

But he knows, really both of them should know, by now, that this is all just fleeting. Toying with Sherlock will only be entertaining for so long, and Sherlock can only focus on the “work,” as he calls it, for so long before he misses the warm embrace of companionship. That had always been what Sherlock really needed, in the end, and Jim would get fed up with Sherlock wanting to play nice when they were supposed to be  _ adversaries _ . With  _ new rules _ needing to be put in place each time Jim inadvertently hurt Sherlock in some way. It was all horribly limiting and made it all so  _ trite _ .

 

For Sherlock, it might all be a game. But for Jim—this is his life.

 

.

 

The pool is quiet at midnight. The chlorinated waters reflect an eerie glow under the half lighting of the space. 

 

Sherlock steps gingerly across the room, along the pool, trying to get a look up into the seating areas, as if that’s where Jim would be. Sitting up in the bleachers puppeteering the whole show. No, no, Jim’s never been the eye-in-the-sky type, though he does like to lurk in the shadows. 

 

Jim smiles, and runs his hands through the sandy hair of one John Watson, bound and gagged with a bomb strapped on. He might be protesting, but he’s faced away from Jim and anyways Jim doesn’t really care.

 

So this is the ex-army doctor Sherlock has taken up flat-sharing with. The famous detective’s blogger. And what a little spitfire! Jim approves, though he doesn’t really understand it. T

 

his fellow seems to encourage Sherlock, and the two of them run all over the city with their little adventures. And then at the end of the day, what they’re both really seeking is companionship. 

 

How perfect. How textbook. Jim doesn’t know how Sherlock’s landed himself such a storybook life. And baffling that Sherlock doesn’t see it himself. Still going around saying it’s all about the work, that he is alone and solitary. He hasn’t been for years. Jim’s checked out that pretty detective Mycroft sent his brother’s way too. That trip to the States he sent Sherlock on where he met his current landlady. The retired spy he has keeping an eye on him at the morgue.

 

Sherlock has no idea what alone even feels like.

 

“Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present,” Sherlock calls out. 

 

Jim smiles down at John Watson, and puts on a earpiece so he’ll be able to hear Jim’s instructions.

 

“We’ve gone over this now, haven’t we?” Jim says, cheerful and bright. “I’ve got my best man trained on your little detective there through a scope and you go off script even a bit and  _ blamo! _ Dead detective. So. Repeat what I say, and nothing else.”

 

The door opens while Sherlock is still talking, and John Watson, ungagged, hands in pockets, steps out.

 

“Evening,” Jim purrs into his earpiece. John swallows, but after a beat, repeats verbatim.

 

And oh, isn’t the shock on Sherlock’s face delicious.

 

Is he hurt John might have lied to him? Disappointed John isn’t who he said he was? Disappointed it isn’t  _ Jim _ ? Or even hopeful that John perhaps, paradoxically embodies everything he wants?

 

Sherlock has always been so  _ slow. _

 

“This is a turn-up, isn’t it Sherlock?” Jim says, as John repeats. He’s still not getting it. Jim rolls his eyes.

 

“Bet you never saw  _ this  _ coming,” Jim says, and the light finally dawns in Sherlock’s eyes. He reveals the bomb, the sniper, yadda-yadda, and rambles on. What will Sherlock’s next move be? Though in a way it didn’t really matter, because Sherlock has those missile plans in hand, so it’s only a matter of time.

 

And Jim wants to get his fun in before  _ that. _

 

He opens the door again and steps out, out from the shadows, letting his footsteps echo.

 

“Did you miss me?”

 

Sherlock turns around to face him, working hard at keeping his face impassive, cataloguing all the changes in Jim since they’ve last laid eyes on each other.

 

“Jim Moriarty,” he introduces himself, smug shrug and smile as he approaches. “Hii.”

 

Sherlock’s eyes go wide at the surname; he’s never had a surname, didn’t even go by Jim in school some years, at least not legally, but he’s picked a common Irish one and Sherlock’s heard of it but hasn’t made the connection until this round and he is surprised. 

 

Sherlock must be racking his brain trying to figure out the significance of the name Jim chose because names have significance, at least they do in all the stories, but that’s really rather the point. There’s no significance here, and that’s why Jim chose it. Just a normal, boring second name to go with his normal, boring first name. It rather suits him, being underestimated and overestimated in equal turns. 

 

Then again, Sherlock is slow, but not dull. He understands. All the crimes Jim’s aided, the intricate network he’s built over the years. Understanding passes between the two of them unspoken.

 

“Consulting criminal,” Sherlock breathes. “Brilliant.”

 

“Isn’t it? I thought so,” Jim says. 

 

John grimaces and Sherlock’s eyes finally flicker toward him, remembering the seriousness of the situation.

 

“I have so  _ loved _ this little game of ours, Sherlock,” Jim says with a hum, contemplative. He can see Sherlock weighing his options, his concern for his very real and very  _ breakable _ John warring with his need to see how the story ends. He remembers all too well that when they played, as children, if Jim broke, all they needed to do was fix it. If John breaks, now, there’s no fixing  _ that. _

 

“People have died,” Sherlock finally says.

 

For some reason this makes Jim irrationally angry, and he nearly screams his response before smoothing down his tie and regaining his composure. Leave it to Sherlock to be decades late to a truth people everywhere have accepted and then state the obvious as if it were  _ some profound realization _ once he’s discovered it. 

 

People  _ die.  _ Life is  _ fleeting _ . Sherlock knows that, at least he knows it  _ now _ , so why doesn’t he cherish what he has?

 

He hasn’t let John in very far at all. He hasn’t even told John he  _ knows who Jim is. _

 

Jim sighs, loud and long-suffering, and John takes the window of opportunity now that he’s let down his guard and crossed into the line of fire and attaches himself to Jim like a limpet. Jim barks out a laugh. How noble! How worthy! 

 

“Good! Very good!” he says, delighted with that one’s tenacity at the  _ utter misery _ on Sherlock’s face! Oh, oh. John tells Jim if the sniper shoots they’ll both go up and that just makes him want to laugh even more. John calls for Sherlock to run and the understanding that his friend would  _ lay down his life _ for Sherlock’s just  _ devastates him _ . 

 

He strains to turn his head and watch John’s expression as a second sniper locks on to Sherlock, and grins in delight.

 

“Gotcha!” 

 

There’s a  _ bang! _ not of explosions but of the doors being thrown open by a fully armed tactical team, Mycroft’s men, and Sherlock and his new little friend are carted off into protection. Jim stands, hands up, stance relaxed, smiling since they’ve yelled  _ all clear! _ to signal the sniper, snipers?, in the rafters has gone. They’re chasing him, no doubt, but they’re chasing a ghost. He left minutes before they’d arrived and Jim planned the perfect route.    
  


So he goes quietly. Cuffed. Head shoved down and put in the back of a tac van. Driven to a jail of some sort, processed and placed into an interrogation room, left around to wait. Security’s decent, but odd. He gets shuffled around skipping all sorts of due process. What’s happening can’t possibly be legal, and Jim wonders if Mycroft is planning to have him retired.

 

A bit of an overreaction, he thinks. He hasn’t endangered that many, with this stunt. Mycroft deals with crises of this level and more every day. 

 

He wears at his lip as he waits, still holding on to the hope that he might get the chance to speak with him alone again.

 

The guards come back and put him in the back of a different car, and then they loops around and around again. The windows are tinted, but even with the numerous detours Jim is sure they’re quite far from where they’ve started, and when the door finally opens he is not surprised but still in disbelief to see that they have stopped in front of a residence, and not a maximum security prison.

 

A woman in quite high heels beckons him to follow, uncuffing his hands as they walk up the steps to the front door. 

 

“He’s pulled quite a lot of strings for this, you know,” she says, and is that a hint of disapproval he hears, beneath the practiced boredom? 

 

She opens the door and gestures for him to enter first, and Jim gingerly sets foot for the first time into what must be Mycroft’s home.

 

“He’s spun some tale about you, undercover, reporting directly to him, and all that. It doesn’t matter. Officially, you’ve been sent in some witness protection program, and are en route with your new identity overseas.”

 

Jim is only half listening, taking in decor of the house instead. Stately and old fashioned, but with oddly modern touches amongst all the wood. One of his identities will be retired, which isn’t a great loss to him. He turns around to ask the woman, must be Mycroft’s assistant, when he will be able to see him, but the words die on his tongue because she isn’t there. 

 

Instead, Mycroft stands in the doorway, looking grim and tired. 

 

“What did you hope to accomplish?” he asks.

 

Jim swallows. This wasn’t how he wanted to start the conversation.

 

“To show Sherlock he has a heart,” Jim says. No point in lying. “And I hoped if he could realized it, and you could see it, you. You could too.”

 

See that you have a heart, Jim means. He finds it all very hard to say. Mycroft is still looking at him with those impassive judge’s eyes, and he hopes dearly to pass muster. No, he’s past that; if he is going to be damned with these feelings he’s not going to pretend they don’t exist.

 

“How have you been?” he asks, when Mycroft once again can’t find a response to his confession. He desperately wants to know, and evidently it shows. Mycroft looks thrown, just a bit, and then remembers himself and closes the door. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is getting longer than expected


	8. MYCROFT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ch's a bit slower, but it got long, so I wasn't quite sure I could wrap it up in just another ch so now it's scheduled for 10 instead of 9. We're almost there!

  
  


Mycroft closes the door behind him with a soft  _ tck.  _ He’s barely finished locking it when Jim’s already thrown himself at Mycroft, latching on in a hug. 

 

Mycroft’s not sure Jim realizes how irrational, how abnormal he seems to act sometimes, a disjointed impulsiveness that on some level stems from the uncertainty Jim feels with his place in the world. 

 

It’s not textbook sociopathy, and he’s not charming one moment and unremorsefully cold the next, it’s simply an emotional immaturity. The unease drives Jim to try on various masks of characters he deems “normal” and lose himself in them. Meanwhile, his real self buried underneath it all gets so little time out in the sun that Mycroft suspects it’s an underdeveloped personality. Hence the impulsivity. Which comes out the most when Jim’s exceedingly comfortable. 

 

Mycroft tenses, then forces himself to let go of the deadbolt and pat Jim on the arms, then his back, in a poor semblance of a hug returned.

 

Jim takes a step back without letting go of Mycroft, leaning back to look up at him.

 

“Oh,” he says quietly, reaching up to touch Mycroft’s cheek. He looks worried, just a bit. And sad, just a bit. Mycroft covers the hand with his own, if only to remove it.

 

“I’ve been fine, Jim,” he says, trying to sound reassuring without context. 

 

“No you haven’t,” Jim responds, just a bit insistent. Mycroft can’t even begin to know what Jim is referring to so he decides to sidestep the matter.

 

“You’ve certainly been busy these past years,” he says conversationally, detaching Jim so he can remove his coat and hang it up. He gestures for them to move out of the foyer into the sitting room. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

 

Jim follows on his heels, eyes flitting around the sitting room as they enter but not taking a seat. Instead he sticks one steps back from Mycroft all the way into the kitchen and watches him even as he fills the pot with water, places it onto the stove, and turns it on. 

 

“You’re making me tea,” Jim finally says. 

 

Mycroft glances at him with some surprise. Does Jim think him above the need for rote habits under stress? Ah. Not that. Mycroft’s always found Jim’s insistence on eating when he didn’t need to or, before that, couldn’t, odd. 

 

Mycroft takes a more serious look at Jim, carefully. His eyes still round and dark and tugging downward at the corners, juxtaposed by his very arched eyebrows. His mouth now more taut with tension than before.  Lips standard by any measure but somehow always provocative. Jim has a very expressive face, which he tends to use at its full extent, or not much at all. He’s taller now, though but not by much. Mycroft resists the urge to run his thumb across Jim’s jaw. He’s clean shaven now, but evidently isn’t always. 

 

“You saw Father before he died?” he asks. Jim’s eyes turn hard.

 

“Yes. And you didn’t bother informing me when he did. I had to find out from other sources.” 

 

Mycroft looks chagrined at that, avoids Jim’s eyes by digging around for the tea as they wait for the water to boil. He hesitates, before preparing two cups. He catches Jim’s split-second smile.

 

“Well then,” Mycroft continues drily, “you must know that you are by and large organic now. I wonder what brought that about.”

 

Jim hums and shrugs. 

 

“Lots of things,” he says easily. “It’s why I’m so evolved. Emotionally, I mean.”

 

Mycroft snorts. He’s joking, but it’s true.

 

Jim settles in with his hands cupped around his tea right there in the kitchen, leaning in with such casual ease as if he’s already made himself at home, as if he hadn’t just risked Sherlock’s life and committed treason two hours ago.

 

Mycroft takes one look at him and sighs.

 

“I’d ask you to explain yourself but I fear my theories as to what all this meant are accurate and it really is just as simple and as straightforward as a continuation of that game between you and Sherlock,” Mycroft says, tone resigned.

 

Jim blows on the tea before taking a sip.

 

“You know I can’t approve of your dealings here across Great Britain, however.”

 

Jim shrugs. 

 

“So do with them as you will,” Jim says. Mycroft frowns. “You can’t have thought I’d come in here and not expect at least a slap on the wrist. But. You’re not putting me away either. And short of incarcerating me for good, we both know I’m going to get up to mischief.”

 

Mycroft purses his lips, but that only makes Jim smile.

 

“The strain of mischief has yet  _ to be determined _ , of course,” Jim continues. 

 

Jim finishes his tea and Mycroft’s is untouched and cold, but before Mycroft can gather the cups Jim beats him to it.

 

“Let me,” he says, moving around the kitchen with ease. “Am I to be staying with you now?”

 

There’s a long pause while Jim rinses out the cups and Mycroft sits, quiet. Jim turns around to see him not thinking over the options so much as struggling to find the words.

 

“I would like it if you did,” Mycroft says. Jim is careful not to let his feelings, rather, his nervousness show.

 

“So you can keep an eye on me?”

 

“Something like that,” Mycroft says, getting up. “For the time being, at least.”

 

He leads Jim to a guest room and can see that he is truly astonished to find articles of clothing in the closet in his size. The room is clearly unused, but well-kept.

 

“Mine is at the other end of the hall,” Mycroft answers when Jim turns around, before he can ask.

 

“That’s too far,” Jim protests.

 

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. 

 

“Yes, well, I’ll just have the architect in tomorrow to make the necessary changes, will I?”

 

Jim scowls. “There’s a room right beside yours.”

 

“It’s a study,” Mycroft responds. They haven’t done a full tour, but Jim must have at least noted the number of doors.

 

Mycroft isn’t in the mood to watch Jim sulk, so he turns to leave. “It’s late, and I plan to turn in. Let’s speak further in the morning.”

 

He sees Jim nod, staring at the bed, before he closes the door. Above the mattress and beneath the sheets is a contact charging layer that he is unsure whether Jim still needs. He’s reviewed the changes his father made and logged, but hasn’t discounted the fact that Jim may have made further modifications himself. He worries and hopes that isn’t the case. Jim has never been one to find ways to supercede the rules, but rather enjoys working within them to find inherent loopholes. Any changes he might have made on his own would only be handicaps, things that could end up hurting him.

 

It is late, and Mycroft hadn’t lied in telling Jim he was turning in. But alone in his bed with the moonlight streaming in, he knows it will be a long while before he can sleep. 

 

He hasn’t seen Jim in  _ years _ , and now he is in his house just a few rooms away. He is unavoidable. There is simply no way for him to put him out of his mind. And all of the unresolved matters between them have only grown more nebulous with possibilities over the years. 

 

It pains him to think he has caused Jim similar torment—only it must be multiplied several times over. But hopefully not prolonged, as he has been busy over the years apart as well.

 

Mycroft thinks he should feel responsible for Jim in some way, having had a hand in creating him. But Jim is the epitome of and idea taking on a life of its own and has always been so self-possessed, so individual and autonomous, so  _ Jim _ , that Mycroft constantly forgets to think of Jim as something other than his own person. To look at him as anything other than a fascinating object Mycroft can’t hope to decipher.

 

Mycroft was worried sleep would elude him as he replayed ways their conversation about Jim’s crimes and intents might go, but instead he spends hours reminiscing and sleep claims him before he realizes it’s coming.

 

.

 

Mycroft dozes off just before the sun begins to rise and jerks awake a little while later, before the birds are up. He ventures downstairs to find Jim rifling through his collection of movies and is just thankful he hasn’t woken up to find Jim scouring the study or watching him in his sleep.

 

“Did you sleep well?” Mycroft asks.

 

“Didn’t sleep.” Jim smiles up at him before going back to his investigation of Mycroft’s knick-knacks. Mycroft decides to leave him to it while he makes some more tea he might not even manage to drink.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Being nosy,” Jim answers with his usual brand of honesty with Mycroft. “You'd think I was up to something, otherwise, if I was too well behaved.” True.

 

Mycroft brings the tray out to the sitting room this time, where Jim has accumulated a horde of memorabilia that clearly hasn't all originated from this room. Jim scoots over to sit beside him on the sofa without pulling his eyes away from the old photo album he's so engrossed in. He scratches a finger over the clear film covering the single photo containing Eurus. 

 

“An East wind is coming,” comes a low, trilling voice beside him. Jim reaches out to pet the black magpie, mechanical, that has hopped onto the couch, but it jumps out of reach when he tries. 

 

“I thought you never got into the building part,” he tells Mycroft. 

 

“Hobby,” Mycroft replies. “There was a month where it seemed world peace had already graced our mortal realm. Or, at least, there were no crises from which we weren't willing to suffer the fallout. I suddenly had a lot of time on many hands.”

 

“Are there others?”

 

“Just this.”

 

“All work and no play makes Mikey a very dull boy,” it chimes in.

 

Jim grins. “I like him.” It hops away. 

 

“Downsides of autonomy,” Mycroft says. A joke. Jim looks unbothered. Mycroft clears his throat. Might as well cut to the chase. 

 

“I'll be frank. What happened with Sherlock yesterday can't ever happen again.”

 

Jim watches him very carefully as he speaks, but doesn't react.

 

“I don't mean to keep you from Sherlock, but you simply cannot attract so much attention. Things aren't just between the two of you anymore; Sherlock rarely solves a crime nowadays his blogger on his right and Scotland Yard on his left. Everything he does is as good as public record. You simply can't take credit.”

 

Jim's lip twitches. 

 

“What?”

 

“Are you worried about me?”

 

Mycroft frowns, and Jim scoots closer to him on the sofa, just watching him with a barely-there smile on his lips. They both still, Mycroft in surprise and Jim studying him. 

 

After a long moment, Jim closes his eyes as turns so he can lean his side into Mycroft's, head on his shoulder.  He breathes a soft sigh of contentment, almost as if getting ready to take a long, comfy nap. Mycroft's eyes are wide as he hopes that certainly isn't the case. He wouldn't do half the good the charger would. 

 

As Jim relaxes, Mycroft tenses. Not because it's Jim, but because he doesn't. Touch. Being in his home, in his inner sanctum, he associates the very setting with privacy. With solitude. Being in the presence of another, it feels off. Wires have been crossed. These two worlds were not meant to collide. 

 

Still, Jim looks so peaceful Mycroft can't bring himself to push him off. He waits.  

 

Finally, likely only a very few minutes later, Jim opens his eyes and slowly rights himself again,  sitting up on the sofa and putting just a little distance between him and Mycroft so they're no longer touching. 

 

“Alright.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

“No more dramatics with Sherlock. I'll do you one better and keep this illicit conversation secret too, tsk tsk Big Brother telling criminals to go on breaking the law as long as they're quiet about it, hey?”

 

“That's not—”

 

Jim laughs.  “You know I'm kidding.”

 

Mycroft finds himself watching Jim, all too comfortable with the lazy, aimless way the conversation is proceeding. It’s easy-going, and it’s absolutely nothing like him at all.

 

“It’s Jim Moriarty now, is it?”

 

“Well, I was never a Holmes,” Jim says with a shrug. 

 

“No, you were always your own person,” Mycroft says, a little wistful. 

 

Jim’s quiet for a moment, studying him. Again.

 

“You’ve never doubted that for a moment, have you?” Jim murmurs. “From the very beginning, you’ve thought of me, referred to me, as my own person. Not someone of your making. Not some _ thing _ of your making.”

 

Mycroft quirks his lips into a half smile. Modesty looks strange on Jim.

 

“You’re brilliant, Jim. I couldn’t possibly imagine taking credit for that.”

 

He means it as a compliment but Jim’s face does something weird; he twists up his lips, then scrunches up his brow, before giving up and groaning in frustration, burying his face in his hands.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“You can’t just  _ say _ things like that!” Jim yells at him, muffled by his hands. He starts muttering. “You can’t just  _ whisk me away _ to the privacy of your home and make me tea and pay me compliments and expect me to  _ deny _ my  _ feelings for you! _ ”

 

Jim pushes himself up, props his elbows on his knees and sets his chin on his hands. “I’m supposed to be the one taking care of  _ you _ , not the other way around.”

 

Jim take care of him? That makes no sense. 

 

Jim narrows his eyes at him, as if the disbelief is obvious and Jim takes offense.

 

“You’re completely neglecting yourself, your well-being,” he tells Mycroft. “Everything you do is for Sherlock, for Queen and country. Just look around! You’ve a beautiful home but scarcely spend five hours a day here, and only to sleep. You’ve a collection of movies you’ve bought but never touched, albums you’re terrified to open, and who knows what’s in that scary study of yours.”

 

“You scarcely know what to do with yourself, or what you’re doing it for,” Jim barrels on. “I don’t need you to try to set things right for me, Mycroft. I want  _ you _ to set  _ your own _ life in order, to have a  _ life _ , period!”

 

Mycroft drops his gaze, and Jim trips over his words, stopping short.

 

“You, I. I’m sorry,” he says, hesitant, unsure whether this is the right response. He reaches out for Mycroft, then drops his hand. “This is all coming out wrong. I set all this up so you could see that Sherlock doesn’t need the coddling! He has done fine on his own, and, look, you saw, yesterday, didn’t you? He’s found his heart. He’s opening himself, bit by bit, and connecting with others. He’s—dare I say it—Sherlock is happy now. And—well, and you could be too.”

 

When Jim finishes, he looks expectantly at Mycroft, who is still staring into his lap. The explanation, while poor in delivery perhaps, and rushed, is meant to be reassuring. It is pointedly not. Mycroft lets out a shuddery breath and then pulls himself to his feet. Without looking at Jim, he briskly walks out of the room, hurrying down the hall in a single minded quest to return to his own room to barricade himself inside.

 

.

 

Mycroft’s barely set foot inside his study when Jim’s right behind him, hand on the door, foot in the doorway tangled between Mycroft’s.

 

“That didn’t come out right,” Jim says. The words are an apology but his tone is harsh, as is his gaze. His eyes bore into Mycroft’s and the angle is awkward, Mycroft’s feet turned toward the inside of the study and his head nearly all the way around to look into Jim’s. Neither of them are moving, but their limbs are awkwardly arranged in a stalemate of a struggle for control of the door. 

 

Mycroft swallows, then steps back, into the study, releasing the door and allowing Jim entrance.

 

“You’re horrible with confrontation,” Jim says. Blunt as ever. 

 

Mycroft huffs. 

 

“Yet you insist on, what, rescuing me?” he says. “You, of all people, having seen what I am behind my facade”—Mycroft’s voice nearly cracks on the inhale—”you should want nothing to do with me.”

 

Jim’s mouth drops open, but Mycroft continues on, unable to stop now that he’s started.

 

“You had the right idea, initially, when you ran,” Mycroft says. “And you shouldn’t have come back. You could have easily gotten away after your confrontation with Sherlock. If you’d just kept a lower profile, like you had been up until a few days ago, there would have been no reason for us to ever cross paths again.”

 

Words will do him no good now, because everything Jim may want to say, Mycroft has a counter for. Verbal sparring will only have the two chasing each other in circles and neither getting what they really mean across to the other. So instead, Jim approaches slowly, and pulls Mycroft into a hug. 

 

It’s loose, but warm, and Mycroft slumps into his embrace, the two of them standing by the entrance of the room silently as the clock sitting against the wall ticks away at the seconds passing.

 

“Here is my proposition,” Jim begins, voice muffled by the fact that he refuses to pull his face from Mycroft’s shoulder.

 

“We go back to the sitting room, and you pick out the silliest movie you have in that stash and we sit and watch it in silence, or sit and not really watch at all but not really think either, and by the time an hour and a half has passed neither of us will be wound up enough to run the second things hit too close to truth,” Jim says quietly. 

 

“Or, if you would still prefer to work to keep your mind sharp and heart locked away, I’m happy to play assistant and file and gather as you need while you work on sorting out what’s to happen for the Belgian elections. Either pick is fine with me. What do you want?”

 

.

 

They end up doing both.

 

Mycroft makes calls and prepares memos as Jim silently hands him this or that file and two hours later three international crises are averted and Mycroft feels like a functional person again. 

 

“You should eat,” Jim reminds him when they’ve finished, and Mycroft sighs but nods in assent. 

 

They wander their way back downstairs, to the other end of the house, but the mission in the kitchen is not fruitful.

 

“Do you not own food?” Jim asks. They stare at his care pantry and near-empty refrigerator, and Mycroft shrugs minutely. Jim slowly picks up a heavy jar of Himalayan salt, of all things. “Well at least whatever we can scrounge up won’t taste like nothing.”

 

They give up and order in.

 

The meal is beautifully prepared and smells delectable, but the actual eating is more rote than pleasurable and Mycroft barely registers what he’s putting in his mouth.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, apropos of nothing mid-meal. “I should have told you when Father died.”

 

Jim blinks at him several times, then sets down his fork.

 

“You didn’t know where I was. No one knew where I was,” Jim points out. Mycroft raises an eyebrow at that; if all the powers that came with being the backbone of the nation’s security operations didn’t come with the ability to find one man, what good was he? Jim continues eating, point taken.

 

“You must have been hurt when I left, the first time,” Jim says, an apology of his own. “I should have written.”

 

“It was completely understandable.”

 

Mycroft tries to escape back to his study after the half-finished meal but Jim grabs ahold of him by the back of his shirt and manages to drag him in from of the television for the aforementioned movie.

 

“It’s not a workday and there are no pressing emergencies,” Jim says shen Mycroft tries to protest. 

 

They’re sitting side by side on the couch and the first act is underway when Mycroft starts to wonder when it was that he became helpless to Jim’s requests. Just as Jim has always wanted to give him the truth, Mycroft has always found it unbearable to have to deny Jim anything. Certainly when they were younger, though Mycroft denied him anyway, he did what he thought was best.

 

He is comforted by the fact that Jim’s quite proven he can hold his own and thus it’s that much more unlikely Mycroft could possibly hurt him. Mycroft knows those he holds dear are time and again driven to ruin, and that it’s better if he stays away. But maybe this time…

 

His trip down memory lane stops on a scene from the early days. Jim asking what Mycroft could possibly want from him, that he can’t possibly want nothing. A shiver runs up his spine, and he’s suddenly repulsed by the idea that Jim is staying here out of some obligation. He freezes, feeling something upon his hand.

 

Jim is looking at him, worried. He’d noticed Mycroft getting lost in thought and distracted from the movie, but at Mycroft’s sudden distress he had to reach for his hand. 

 

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s  _ not _ that,” Jim says in a clearly unamused tone. He huffs, then scoots closer. “I made a  _ huge _ mistake, leaving last time.  _ Huge. _  And I  _ won’t  _ do it again, you hear?”

 

He worries his lip and turns his round, earnest eyes on to Mycroft. It’s practically cheating.

 

“Tell me I’m wrong that there’s something between us,” he says, voice low. “Tell me you haven’t felt the same  _ electric  _ roar of  _ something _ between us everytime I’m near, that my memory fades  _ easily _ when I cross your mind.”

 

Mycroft’s sure his hand’s shaking when he brings it up to cup Jim’s cheek.

 

“Jim,” he murmurs, leaning in, impossibly slow.

 

“This is my first kiss, you know,” Jim says, right before it happens. His lips are  a hair’s breadth away, noses touching, and Mycroft freezes. Jim frowns. Not the reaction he was expecting.

 

“What?” Mycroft asks.

 

Jim rolls his eyes. “I’ve had relationships, yes. But they weren’t exactly, well,  _ extended,  _ if you catch my drift. It doesn’t matter.”

 

He tries to pull Mycroft back in, but Mycroft leans out of his grasp, sitting back. Jim’s expression is incredulous.

 

“You can’t be serious,” he says. Mycroft’s eyes are trained on the screen instead.

 

“You  _ martyr, _ ” Jim groans.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft says, not looking at him, not looking at anything. “Just. I. Give me a bit of time.”

 

“Take all the time you need,” Jim grumbles, sitting back heavily as well, crossing his arms. ‘It’s just a  _ kiss _ , it isn’t that  _ serious _ .”

 

“It’s clearly serious to you, Jim,” Mycroft says softly, “if you’ve deliberately avoided it all this time.”

 

Jim’s quiet at that, so Mycroft musters up the attention, to not be fully detached, and reaches for Jim’s hand. 

 

The silence doesn’t last long, but it comes frequently.

 

“I’ve never wanted anyone else,” Jim says. “Well, not  _ really _ , not when it was me, I mean.”

 

Mycroft’s not ready to admit the same.

 

“Did you ever think Sherlock…?” It upsets Mycroft that all he can talk about today is where he’s gone wrong, but he can’t help it.

 

Jim sighs noisily at that. “You two never could understand each other. But I suppose if you had known Sherlock would have grown up fine and normal left to his own devices, we would have never met.”

 

“Well it wasn’t good of you to threaten Dr. Watson’s life, not after Sherlock’s found him after all this time.”

 

“ _ Please _ . Sherlock wouldn’t have let it happen.”

 

“Crudely made, Jim.”

 

“Now the real question is, do you think it’s true love? Or a deep friendship? One can be just as strong as the other, I think, oh don’t look at me like that.”

 

“ _ Us _ , though, I’ve always been attracted to you,” Jim says. He smirks at Mycroft’s disbelieving glance. “I’m glad I caught you on the cusp of summer, your freckles are starting to show, just like when we first met. I loved those freckles, and I was surprised to learn they don’t stay around all year.”

 

Jim reaches for Mycroft’s hand before he’s realized he’s self-consciously reached up for his face.

 

“And if you’ll let me, I want to kiss every single one.”

 

Mycroft blinks with something—not quite  _ interest _ —at the notion, and he can see something of a lightbulb, an idea, spring to life in Jim’s head. The smirk widens into a grin, and he turns back to the movie with a renewed joviality.

 

“I want to kiss a lot of other places too,” he continues contemplatively. “Though, a fantasy of mine has always been you just holding me down and using me.”

 

If Mycroft were eating something, he might have choked at the blatant confession.

 

“I know, I know, both of us would be appalled at the idea of seeing me as nothing but an object, but hey this is a fantasy, and sexual fantasies are meant to be all kinds of twisted, and really it should come at no surprise,  _ Mycroft _ , that me imagining that you see me as nothing but an object for your pleasure gets me off every time.”

 

So he’s resorting to come ons to tempt Mycroft into action.

 

“I’m not saying it’s all I want though, don’t get me wrong. I want to hold you through the night, I want all the romantic lovemaking we should be entitled to after these veritable  _ years _ of pining and, perhaps in your case, self-loathing. I want morning sex too, oh. Lots of morning sex. Sleepy rutting and mm, blow jobs. I want those long legs of yours wrapped around me. I want you to take me up against a wall. And you to—”

 

Mycroft is aware that he has no idea what is going on in the movie anymore when the phone rings, interrupting Jim’s monologue, the forgotten film, and Mycroft’s reverie.

 

They look at each other, Mycroft looks at the caller, and then he picks up.

 

“Detective,” he says, trying not to sound at a loss for breath. “What can I do for you?”

 

“I think something’s the matter with Sherlock.” 


	9. MYCROFT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I totally posted this to the wrong fic oops  
> ANYWAY we're almost there, there's basically just an epilogue-ish thing left

Sally Donovan’s voice is rushed, a bit breathless, as if she’s been running. 

 

“What do you mean?” Mycroft asks.

 

They’d crossed paths only briefly and only a handful of times, and never traded more than a few words. But once, after a particularly difficult case that put her superior, Lestrade, through the wringer, she agreed to his tacitly made request that she call to him as something of a last resort, when it came to Sherlock’s meddling.

 

“We got the two of them home after the incident and then the Detective Inspector and I came around this morning just to check on them. We were inside the flat when Sherlock got a message on that phone of his, the one he’d been carting around all day that got him into this mess, and then without telling anyone where he was going, not Greg, not John, he ran out,” Donovan says. 

 

Mycroft lowers his gaze to Jim, who is still sitting on the couch without a care in the world. Had he had enough time to set up one last showdown for Sherlock? Possibly, yes. He could have very well set it up in advance too. Though it didn’t quite sit right.

 

“And?” Mycroft asks, because there is no way she would call him simply for something as silly as Sherlock rushing out of 221B Baker Street.

 

“And,” she sounds reluctant. “They have him.”

 

Utter silence.

 

“‘They’ who, detective?” 

 

“The ones who sent the note,” Donovan starts to say. There’s a pause, like she’s trying to decide how to explain. Or being told what to say. There’s the barest tremor in her voice when she speaks again. “Come alone.”

 

How ominous.

 

“I’ll be right over.”

 

The line goes dead and Mycroft sends a message to his driver before pocketing the phone. Alone or not, 221B is always under surveillance. He’ll check the footage on his way over, and should anything happen to him, it’ll all be on camera as well.

 

“Where are you going?” Jim asks.

 

“Just dropping in on Sherlock. You did give him quite the scare.”

 

Jim sighs noisily. “Let me come with you.”

 

“I’d rather not; there’s still the risk of you being recognized,” Mycroft says lightly, but it’s final. Jim can’t help but look a little hurt. It’s enough to make Mycroft lean down to press a small kiss to Jim’s forehead, stunning him into stillness as Mycroft picks up his things and heads for the door.

 

“I shouldn’t be long.”

 

.

 

The flat is suspiciously silent when Mycroft announces his presence, but when he pushes on the door, it falls open with a creak.

 

And then Mycroft is greeted with the sight of Sally Donovan, Greg Lestrade, and John Watson.

 

Each gagged and tied to a chair.

 

The humming of a small drone, no bigger than a toaster, catches Mycroft’s attention, and stops him from moving any closer. Attached to it is a folded piece of paper with a note he presumes is for him. Mycroft then notices the piece of paper on the floor in front of Donovan, instructions she’d read over the phone scribbled on them in unfamiliar script.

 

All three of them are knocked out. 

 

The drone hovers just a tad closer, and he steps forward to accept the note.

 

_ It’s been a while. _

_ Is Sherlock still your favorite? _

_ Play a game with me, and if you win, I’ll give him back. _

_ You can choose a companion. _

_ Take a pick. Any of these three. _

_ But I warn you, they might get hurt. _

_ They might not make it. _

_ They could die. _

_ It’s a tough decision, I know. _

_ I’ll wait. _

_ But not too long. _

_ See the timer on my little friend here?  _

_ If it hits zero, the flat goes up in flames. _

_ Boom! _

 

Mycroft looks to the hovering drone, with red numbers ticking down. He has just under five minutes before the drone supposedly detonated. It’s military grade, and not yet on the market. Or similar, at least. Mycroft has seen plans come across the Defense Ministry desk, but this one is modified. To do what? He doesn’t know; has no time to analyze it. Presumably the cameras are in tact, and this mysterious player is watching his panic.

 

Mycroft cannot endanger any of these civilians. And John Watson, his brother’s closest friend, is the last person he wants to drag into this. John would also never stand for it if he knew Sherlock was in danger and he was denied the opportunity to help.

 

Thankfully, John isn’t awake to make that decision.

 

Mycroft didn’t need any of them, not to solve this  _ “game.” _ But he has to pick for the sake of these silly rules.

 

The Detective Inspector, in the center, is a known figure in the press and should he go missing he would be noticed immediately.

 

Mycroft glances to the left to Donovan. As sergeant, her rank and profile are lower than the Inspector’s, and a day ago Mycroft might not have had second thoughts about choosing her. 

 

He hesitates now, and is awed by the forethought the kidnapper had to know that just having her speak to him on the phone, she’s rendered in his mind as a person. Mycroft’s modus operandi has always been to protect the people of London, and she is one of those people. Except when it came to Sherlock. Nothing ever came before Sherlock.

 

He takes a shuddering breath, and his eyes open in alarm when he realizes the inhale he heard was not his only. John Watson has woken up.

 

“Mycroft?” John asks groggily. He slowly realizes he is tied, hands behind and ankles together, legs and torso bound to a chair. His eyes clear and he jerks in the chair, nearly tipping it, and the first lucid word is “Sherlock!”

 

“You saw who took him?” Mycroft asks urgently. 

 

“Where—” John’s eyes land on the drone, and widen. “That, it shot him—”

 

John is panicking, and Mycroft takes another urgent step forward. What he needs now is  _ information _ , not the panicked worries of his brother’s friend.

 

He kneels before the man, trying to make him focus.

 

“John, you need to tell me exactly what happened.”

 

Behind Mycroft, the drone extends. Its parts fold in on itself and then out again, rearranging for new purposes. It picks up another piece of paper, and inks a message onto it. Fully extended, the drone is not much more than a wire frame, and not that tall, but it’s enough.

 

“That thing, it—watch out!”

 

A tranquilizer dart shoots out, hitting Mycroft in the back of the neck.

 

The last thing John sees before he’s hit as well is the new note.

 

_ Well done, Mycroft. A good choice. _

 

.

 

Everything goes dark.

 

It’s like floating on a small wooden raft out in the great ocean.

 

There are periods of calm, and then it starts again and there is no way such a small piece of wood will buffet against the vast sea itself. It jerks, it tips, and—

 

Mycroft gasps.

 

He’s slumped over on the floor of a clinical looking room, against the wall. Similar groans rouse him to alertness immediately, and his heart hammers, seeing John and Sherlock wake as well.

 

The drone had hit him with a tranquilizer, evidently. It must have been what knocked the three out in the living room of 221B just before. But how did they get here?

 

It is an asymmetrical white room with no discernable doors, windows, or other exits. Fluorescent lights hang from ceiling fixtures. The room is not small, and the lack of furniture makes it look slightly more spacious. 

 

Sherlock meets Mycroft’s eyes. He looks sad, but not resigned. That’s good, isn’t it?

 

“If you’re hoping John caught a glimpse of who the culprit is, you’ll be disappointed,” Sherlock says. “I’ve already questioned him. No man went in or out of 221B in order to set all this up. A military grade drone was enough to do the job. Well, three. Out through the window, then an autonomous vehicle.”

 

Mycroft racks his brain for who might want to do this to them. Who might be capable of it.

 

Sherlock frowns, sensing his brother’s lack of conclusion.

 

“Not work related for you, then?”

 

“But why would they take  _ you _ ?”

 

Sherlock snorts. “No small secret I’m one of, oh, two things you care about,” he mutters dismissively.

 

“Two?” John asks.

 

“Me, and Jim,” Sherlock answers quietly. John looks confused.  

 

“You spoiled him,” Sherlock continues, “but you were always terrified of me.”

 

Mycroft must look incredulous, because he continues. 

 

“You always looked at me like I caught you by surprise, like it was baffling I was even able to speak. When I asked you to play with me, begged you, you hardly ever responded. Just...watched me,” Sherlock remembers, voice devoid of feeling. “It disturbed me, and in time I stopped asking. It never bothered Jim, though. I think he took it as some sort of flattery that you found any part of him fascinating. You let him get away with anything. I suppose you did to me as well.”

 

Mycroft doesn’t know what to say. Has this been what Sherlock has thought of him all this time? A far cry from the reality he remembers.

 

He doesn’t have time to formulate a reply, though, because the wall opposite of the three of them parts in the center, revealing itself to be not a door, but a screen embedded into the wall. It suggests at least one of the other walls must part to open.

 

The black screen snaps to life and cheery looking, cartoon yellow bird hops across some drawn glass. It opens its beak, and a bright voice, a computerized, but non-threatening voice, begins to speak.

 

“Welcome to The Maze,” it chirps. “It’s like a game, like a video game. Children like those, don’t they?”

 

“It’s simple enough: You will be asked questions, and when you get the answer right, the door opens and you proceed! Congratulations, you are one step closer to the end.”

 

It looks like he was right about the other hidden paneled doors.

 

“But if you get the answer wrong: you lose a life. Good thing you’ve got three!”

 

They glance at each other, disquieted. 

 

“Are you ready to proceed? Please verbally confirm, or request to hear the instructions again. I’ll wait, but not all day.”

 

“If this maze cannot be completed in three hours’ time, the game will be wiped. That means everyone still in it will be too.”

 

“Are you ready to proceed? Please verbally confirm, or request to hear the instructions again.”

 

Mycroft looks at Sherlock. He wants to find another way out. But Sherlock’s eyes are bright; he lives for the game. Even when it endangers others’ lives. Even when it endangers his own life. So it doesn’t surprise Mycroft that he looks completely willing to proceed. It  _ does _ surprise Mycroft when he sees his brother look to John, and hesitation flickers in his eyes. Sherlock looks to Mycroft.

 

“Well?” Sherlock asks. It is Mycroft’ choice after all.

 

“Yes, we understand the instructions,” Mycroft says. “We will proceed.”

 

“Good choice, well done,” the computerized bird chirps. Then, to their surprise, it says, “This first question is for Sherlock.”

 

“At age 5, who was your best friend?”

 

Mycroft feels a wave of dread crash over him. Sherlock just seems baffled. John exhales a shaky laugh.

 

“Well, a bit of trivia, and personal at that. That can’t be hard to answer, can it?” John says. “Why don’t we look more relieved?”

 

Sherlock looks unsure, eyes flitting to Mycroft before addressing John.

 

“I...dealt with a bit of trauma around that age. I don’t remember much of it, or before,” Sherlock says. “But, I do remember playing pirates with a friend. Victor Trevor, a boy my age. I’ve seen photo albums.”

 

“Is that your final answer?” the bird chirps.

 

Mycroft feels ill. Sherlock is looking to him for confirmation. What is he supposed to say? 

 

Technically…

 

Technically Victor  _ was _ Sherlock’s best friend.

 

The other one was never meant to be just a friend. It was meant to be family.

 

Mycroft nods.

 

“Yes,” Sherlock responds immediately.

 

A deathly long pause.

 

Then, a happy fanfare sounds, and one of the walls parts in the center, sliding open to reveal a passageway into another, similar asymmetrical room.

 

Once in the room, no screen appears, but speakers from the ceiling corners ask yet another question.

 

“This one is for John, the companion.”

 

“Alright,” John says.

 

“How many siblings does Sherlock have?”

 

John and Sherlock look taken aback by the simplicity of the question, but Mycroft has no doubt what is behind this all now. But the question was, who would want to make them relive that failure?

 

John looks to Sherlock, quirks an eyebrow.

 

“Any secret siblings I should know about?”

 

Sherlock’s usual arrogance is gone; he gives Mycroft a look of confusion.

 

“Why are they asking us this?” Sherlock says. “It’s no secret we’re siblings. This suggests there is another, and why would they want to do that? Who would want to do that?”

 

“There is no other Holmes sibling,” Mycroft answers honestly.

 

“Not even a stillbirth I’m not aware of? Or don’t remember?” Sherlock presses.

 

“No,” Mycroft says.

 

“Remember,” John says, voice surprisingly stable, “one of our lives is on the line if we get these answers wrong.”

 

Sherlock’s eyes bore into him until he relents.

 

“I tried to build Sherlock a sibling once,” Mycroft confesses. “It did not go well.”

 

“Jim?” Sherlock asks, confused. 

 

Mycroft shakes his head. “Before that. A girl your age. A sister. She...broke down.”

 

Sherlock face is unreadable. He’s disbelieving. John as well, but he is much more animated about it.

 

“I’m sorry,  _ built _ ?” he demands.

 

“Yes,” Mycroft answers quietly, with a sigh. “Decommissioned not six months after she was brought online. It doesn’t count. Sherlock has just one sibling, a brother: me.”

 

“Yes and that’s fine and dandy but are we just going to brush the fact that you said you—you  _ built _ Sherlock a sister? As a  _ child _ ? Is this some kind of joke?”

 

“Just answer the question, John, the clock is ticking and we don’t know how many rooms there are,” Mycroft replies impatiently.

 

“You can’t just build a human being, Mycroft,” John shoots back. He turns to Sherlock, who just looks lost now. Sherlock shakes his head, letting John know he doesn’t remember it enough to tell either. Mycroft relents. 

 

“Hardly a child. And our father was quite the talented robotics engineer; he built prosthetics, made strides in fine-motor control that was unparalleled. Quite well known, if you would like to look him up.”

 

“His lesser known hobby was dabbling in artificial intelligence. It was a field our mother excelled in, and supposedly, to the world, she took her work to the grave. That wasn’t the case, of course, Father inherited it. And we thought perhaps it was fitting that her legacy would give birth to the child she could not.”

 

Mycroft’s mouth feels dry. He’s never once vocalized his family’s past, not like this. Even Sherlock hasn’t ever heard it so plainly.

 

The two of them are staring at him in mute horror.

 

“So this...girl you—decommissioned?” John asks, sorting it out in his mind. “She was alive?”

 

Mycroft closes his eyes. Well wasn’t that the big debate?

 

“Yes,” he says. He doesn’t even need to contemplate it. 

 

“So Sherlock had two siblings,” John says.

 

“No,” Mycroft insist.

 

Sherlock reaches out for John’s arm, but he’s staring at Mycroft.

 

“If you’re wrong about this, Mycroft, it’s one of our lives on the line. It’s John’s life on the line, and—”

 

“Two siblings,” John says, before Mycroft has any say. “Final answer.”

 

The door opens, and Sherlock can’t bear to look at him.

 

.

 

“You let me forget her,” Sherlock says quietly.

 

By Mycroft’s estimate, they had been in the maze for well over an hour, and probably had half the allotted time remaining, and no sense of their real progress. The questions clearly focused on their childhood, Eurus, and Mycroft’s sins. Some of the questions seemed benign—how Sherlock got the small scar near his temple, what game he liked to play most with Victor—but they pieced together an ugly puzzle. One that suggested Mycroft had blatant disregard for life itself, even from an early age. He was the villain here, in Sherlock’s story, in Eurus’s. Perhaps Jim’s as well. 

 

Sherlock’s childhood was illuminated for before them all, yet he was only barely remembering, stumbling through the maze in a sleep-like stupor trying to grasp onto strands of reality. 

“You were traumatized, Sherlock, you forgot about her. I wasn’t going to force you to remember,” Mycroft says. 

 

“Not just her, Mother as well. You and Father always kept her things under lock and key, that much I do remember now,” Sherlock says. One of the questions had been about the locked room in the house, triggering a panic attack in Sherlock. Their mother’s room. The master bedroom really, which became a living mausoleum after her passing. 

 

John is still trying to wrap his mind around of functional, sentient artificial intelligence, but after Sherlock’s break, he stayed his hand at Mycroft, stemming the questions and outbursts to instead quietly support his friend.

 

“Last question,” the bird chirps, cheerful tone a painful contrast to their mood. “This one is for Mycroft.”

 

“Who will you choose?” it asks, and the wall behind them turns from white to clear glass, with a part down the center.

 

On the floor in the center of the room is Jim, still dressed as he was that morning. He lies on the floor unmoving, an arm and leg bent at a strange angle, one shoulder clearly dislocated.

 

“Him? Or your brother and his friend?” Mycroft barely hears the rest of the question what with his blood thrumming in his ears.

 

The wall opposite the glass wall opens, slowly, giving them a glimpse of the outside.

 

“Congratulations, you’ve all made it to the end of the maze. The exit is opening now, and as soon as the doors are completely open, they will begin to close once again, and stay closed. On the other side of the room is Jim, yes, really Jim. He’s broken, and the room will soon fill with nerve gas from the vents. There won’t be enough time to save him and yourself. Which will you pick?”

 

Mycroft takes a step toward the glass, not even looking out the exit to see where they might have been held all this time. He can’t see Jim’s face. 

 

“This is insane,” John mutters. 

 

“Mycroft,” Sherlock calls his name, and he sounds like that terrified, small child Mycroft couldn’t protect.

 

Mycroft turns to John, in hopes that he can provide Sherlock with what Mycroft was never able to.

 

“Please hurry.”

 

John nods, and pulls Sherlock along with him out the door.

 

He struggles with the glass to no avail, but as soon as the door to freedom behind him shuts, the glass panels part ways,

 

“Jim!”

 

It’s futile, and he knows it. A stupid decision because he’s in a stupid state of mind. Mycroft rushes over to Jim’s side anyway, half to examine the damage and half just to hold him and be sure he isn’t completely lost.

 

His gaze is glassy and unseeing, and Mycroft’s heart is spiked with fear seeing Jim’s state as a broken, inanimate object.  

 

He has never felt so irrational in his life.

 

“Please, please,” he says, barely recognizing that he is speaking. The shoulder is completely smashed and will have to be replaced. His leg is an easier fix. Mycroft cradles Jim’s head in his hands, in his lap and with shaking fingers fumbles to check it for further damage, for the tell-tale signs of irreparable damage. 

 

A hissing sound lets him know the vents have opened, and the gas is coming.

 

There’s nothing wrong that he can find; Jim’s neck is unblemished, as is the skull of his frame. Mycroft stares at him, until he’s unable to bear the sight of his lifeless eyes. He closes them gently, and leans down slowly, with more time than he has to spare, to press a kiss to Jim’s lips. 

 

The world goes dark.

 

.

 

“You left him all alone.”

 

Mycroft blinks back to consciousness to find himself sprawled on the floor of a small, dark room. Screens line one wall of it, the only illumination in the room.

 

A young woman sits on a stool before the screens, staring out to the world through her digital windows.

 

A significant weight is missing; Mycroft jolts up to a sitting position.

 

“Don’t worry about Jim,” she says, finally turning around to look at Mycroft. Those blue eyes. So similar to Sherlock’s. “He’ll be fixed up once again. He didn’t hurt. Much. He wasn’t awake for most of it.”

 

“Eurus,” Mycroft croaks. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. 

 

She smiles, sensing his terror. Then her expression goes blank once again.

 

“Father was lonely. I suppose he was never very good at showing it. But after Sherlock went to university, you stopped writing, stopped visiting. Jim dropped off the grid. Sherlock wasted his life away.”

 

“So he brought me back. He always felt bad about how quickly you scrapped me, but you were so adamant I was a failure. You know he was shocked when you suggested he build another one,” she says.

 

Then she sighs. The stool creaks as she turns away from him back to the screens. He can see her drones repairing Jim’s arm in another room. Another camera mounted on a drone watches Sherlock and John return to their flat.

 

“And then he passed away,” she says. “He didn’t die alone. That was all I could do for him.”

 

“And suddenly it was just me, on my own.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft says. Not just because he thinks it’s what she wants to hear, but because he really means it.

 

"Just a bit of revenge," Eurus says casually. "No hard feelings."

 

Mycroft is silent for a long, heavy moment.

 

"You know I can't let you go free like this."

 

She holds put her arm, port exposed, bringing up terrible memories of Sherlock lying prone and pale, with his arm marked up.

 

"Yes, I know. Go on, don't be afraid." Then she looks away. "Now that he's gone, I don't exactly have anything to stay for. This was it, this last game."

 

"And how did we do?" Mycroft asks, voice rough.

 

"Terribly."

 

He nods, reaching for her arm. He sees the room has already been set up for her to power down, and then be taken apart. A peaceful death in his favorite chair.

 

He connects the port. The light goes out from Eurus's eyes.   
  



	10. THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many rapid pov changes/time jumps. I wish I was sorry but

_ Jim’s eyes suddenly flicker with light, then settle back to their usual, chocolate-brown hue. The pupils widen, then shrink. _

 

_ He’s awake. _

 

_ The black little dots move, scanning the room, as he blinks rapidly to adjust to the suddenness that he’s been brought online, and do a self-scan. The arm is...new. The leg is different. But he’s fine.  _

 

_ His eyes land on a face, a worried one, hovering above him. Grey-blue eyes staring down at him. _

 

_ “Hello,” Jim says, rearranging his features into a polite smile. _

 

_ Mycroft feels his heart plummet down into his gut. _

  
  
  


THREE MONTHS LATER

  
  
  


John holds the door at 221B open, waiting for Sherlock.

 

“Nervous?” he calls into the flat. The jibe summons Sherlock immediately, a determined look on his face as he fixes his scarf around his neck, coat flapping dramatically behind him.

 

“Don't be absurd, John.”

 

That was the Sherlock he knew.

 

It had been a difficult path back.

 

.

 

_ The sound of the door closing behind him knocks Sherlock out of his stupor. His eyes snap to the blank white wall, and then John’s determined eyes. _

 

_ “What have you done?” he whispers.  _

 

_ He nearly lost John just the day before. And now...he might have lost his brother. _

 

_ “John,” he says again, volume rising. “We have to go back, we have to get back in, for Mycroft.” _

 

_ John holds an arm out, stopping him. _

 

_ “John!” Sherlock feels betrayed, more than ever. If John could not muster the heart to help, the very least he could do was to not try and stop Sherlock. He of  _ all people  _ Sherlock thought could be counted on to do the morally upright thing. To eschew self and ego in favor of saving lives, no matter his personal feelings. _

 

_. _

 

_ “First, to do no harm,” Sherlock remembers reading. He is five and sitting on the stool of a workshop and lifts his gaze from the leather-bound tome to wizened blue-green eyes.  _

 

_ “What does that mean?” Sherlock asks. That earns him a crinkled smile, and his father's fingers comb through his curls. _

 

_ “Ethics,” his father replies, and Sherlock wrinkles his nose.  _

 

_ “It comes from an ancient Greek text, one of the first teachings of the practice of medicine,” he elaborates before Sherlock interrupts. _

 

_ “Do you practice medicine?” _

 

_ “Yes. The original line was closer to ‘to do good, or to do no harm,’ but present bioethics reverses it slightly. The amount of irreparable damage and risk that could arise from the wish to do good, solely, without consideration for collateral damage, is not to be underestimated.” _

 

_ Sherlock purses his lips, trying to parse the jargon. _

 

_ “What are you working on?” _

 

_ Father hesitates, turning the small limb in his hand over. Sherlock reaches out for the arm too, and Father doesn’t stop him. _

 

_ He holds it, comparing it side by side to his own. _

 

_ “This is for a child,” Sherlock says. _

 

_ “Yes.” _

 

_. _

 

_ A knock comes at 221B, and Sherlock flings the door open, only to less than a second later fling his arms around his brother, nearly knocking him off his feet in a completely unexpected gesture. _

 

_ Mycroft reaches up to pat Sherlock’s arm with one hand, reaching out for the wall to steady himself with the other. _

 

_ “I tried, I tried,” he mumbles into Mycroft’s shoulder. _

 

_ “I know, and you did very well. It was a horribly tasking event _ —”

 

_ “For none so much as you.” _

 

_ “Yes, but difficult for you nonetheless, Sherlock,” Mycroft answers gently. _

 

_ Sherlock’s only response is to squeeze tighter. _

 

_ “You couldn’t possibly have thought I was in real danger,” Mycroft says quietly. Sherlock doesn’t respond. “You remember Eurus now, don’t you? All of it?” _

 

_ Mycroft can feel Sherlock nod against his shoulder. _

 

_ “I didn’t remember it all until after we got out,” Sherlock finally says, detaching himself from his brother and taking a step back, studying his face now with an emotionless, studious expression. _

 

_ “What is she now?” Sherlock asks. _

 

_. _

 

A dark-haired young woman looks up from her menu, catching Sherlock’s eye.  She waves, and they approach.

 

John and Sherlock take a seat across from Eurus. It’s the first time he’s seen his sister in over two decades. Sherlock takes in her similar blue-green eyes, the dark loose curls, and her young, pale face. She’s dressed in a yellow sundress that brightens the table.

  
He finds himself reaching for her hand, then examining her arm even though he knows the scars he remembers won’t be there.

 

“Hello Sherlock, John,” she says, breaking the silence. It’s not an easy meeting; their first encounter with her having been a kidnapping, and subsequent game with life-or-death stakes. John is uneasy, but Sherlock—Sherlock  _ remembers. _

 

“How—how have you been?” Sherlock asks. 

 

She cracks a smile.

 

“I’ve spent all my life in a workshop, keeping Father company after you two left, and then alone,” she says. “Other than that—well.”

 

She means it as a joke, with the blunt delivery, but Sherlock winces nonetheless.

 

“It wasn’t until Mycroft convinced me, repaired me, that I’ve even seen the light of day,” she continues more seriously. “I’ve had my own flat for all of two weeks.”

 

John looks down at his coffee cup, suddenly finding the mug infinitely more captivating than the conversation. Sherlock glances to him, and takes his hand too. Mycroft is still a difficult subject.

 

.

 

_ Mycroft stands in the doorway of 221B, and looks away. No, he looks toward the stairs—down the stairs. _

 

_ Sherlock’s eyes widen. _

 

_ “She’s...here?”  _

 

_ Mycroft starts to shake his head, but stops. _

 

_ “Father rebuilt her after we had left home,” he says. “And she was left alone in the house after he died. She needs some… medical attention, but. After that. I suppose she will get to have a life of her own.” _

 

_ Sherlock stares.  _

 

_ “Can...I see her?” _

 

_ Mycroft hesitates. “I...don’t think she would want that—not yet, at least,” he hurries to clarify, seeing Sherlock’s stricken expression. _

 

_ “And Jim?” _

 

_ “Jim’s fine. He’s coming home with me.” _

 

_ Behind Sherlock, John sits in his chair, staring at his laptop but not looking at a thing on the screen. He’d talked, the entire way home, murmuring promises and reassurances to Sherlock as he withdrew into himself all through the walk, the cab ride, and then up the stairs. And then, Sherlock shook him off. He hasn’t said a single word since. _

 

_ Mycroft looks at John until he looks up, until he can catch his eye. _

 

_ “Thank you,” Mycroft says, as earnestly as he can.  _

 

_ John just nods, before turning back to his laptop. _

 

_. _

 

Eurus smiles and spreads her fingers out, palms on the table.

 

“I think I’m going to start a company,” she says.

 

“Killer drones?” John snipes. Sherlock shoots him a look, but Eurus’s smile only widens.

 

“You’re John Watson,” she says.

 

“That I am.” He crosses his arms. He didn’t come here to fight, but they deserved an apology.

 

“I understand I gave you quite a scare. Well, both of you. I apologize,” she says. John twists his mouth. Too easy. He needs to know she’ll do no more harm, not to Sherlock. 

 

John’s watching Eurus, but Sherlock’s watching John.

 

“Gene therapy,” she finally says, breaking the silence yet again.

 

“I’m sorry?” John asks.

 

“Father died leaving some of his existing work to the companies that contracted him, but that was the least of it. He made phenomenal strides in bioengineering, not just prosthetics and robotics.”

 

She looks up at Sherlock. 

 

“Jim is more organic than he is mechanical now, did you notice? Father did that. And with his research I could do much more. He’s left all of that to, well, no one. But I can access it. He’s left me funds as well.”

 

“I think I could do a lot of good.  _ Father’s  _ work could do a lot of work,” she says, finishing quietly. “He had a lot of gifts left to give.”

 

.

 

Across the street from the cafe, a black mapie hops from post to post along a cast-iron gate. 

 

“A lot of gifts left to give,” it repeats, it a rumbly, low voice. 

 

Its eyes pick up the entire scene at the table, and the optics transfer them back to his master.

 

.

 

Jim buries his nose into the crook of Mycroft’s neck and breathes deeply.

 

“Mmph.”

 

Mycroft blinks awake, having momentarily drifted off. He cards his fingers through Jim’s hair with one hand and reaches around blindly for his phone with the other.

 

“Oh Jim, it’s nearly noon,” he groans.

 

Jim’s only response is to slowly trace the shell of his ear with his tongue.

 

“Ah—” Mycroft squirms; that just makes Jim shift over to better pin him down with his full weight. 

 

“You have to let me go,” Mycroft complains.

 

“Never.” Jim grins, and smacks a loud kiss against his cheek.

 

Mycroft can’t help but look at him fondly, tracing his fingers along his jaw, then down to the purpling bruise on Jim’s collarbone. It brings to mind immediately their activities just hours prior. 

 

_ Waking at dawn, restless, and finding Jim the same. Roving hands, teeth, then Jim pushing him up against the headboard, straddling him, riding him until they both collapsed, boneless. Mycroft’s teeth wearing at Jim’s neck, his collarbone, as he held him.  _

 

_ Face to face, so close it’s like Jim’s thoughts echo in his own mind, breath hot on his face as he listed all the things he loved about him. Like every other morning. And yet he always found something new. _

 

_ Kiss me again, Jim commands, and he complies without hesitation. Soul-consuming, all-encompassing, perhaps just a  _ tad  _ less desperate now, after all these weeks. Jim sucks at his tongue as he draws it back out, before pulling back so he can kiss his way down Mycroft’s body. _

 

_ Mycroft strokes the back of Jim’s neck as he does, inducing a full body shiver.  _

 

_ Jim takes his time sucking a massive love bite onto Mycroft’s hip bone, then props his head up with a hand and a smile as he notices Mycroft’s renewed interest.  _

 

_ “Come here,” Mycroft murmurs, and Jim drags himself back up to nip at his lips.  _

 

_ Mycroft maneuvers a leg over Jim’s, who raises his eyebrows in question, then grabs a pillow to place underneath Mycroft’s hips. _

 

_ He remembers his legs being held apart, head thrown back, Jim staring down at him, watching the entire time he fucked him— _

  
“Give me another kiss,” Jim says, and Mycroft rolls his eyes, but is helpless to do so nonetheless. It’s a soft, slow kiss, Mycroft mapping Jim’s lips with his own. Jim scrapes his bottom lip with his teeth, and Mycroft draws back with a tiny exhale.

 

“I’m pretty certain that’s how we got into losing the last several hours,” he says without real complaint. “Twice.”

 

“Morning sex is a time honored tradition for couples,” Jim replies earnestly.

 

“Please stop doing that.”

 

“What?”

 

“Making all your excuses sound like you got them out of a book.” Mycroft gives him a faux-horrified look. “Terrible.”

 

They’re interrupted by the fluttering of wings, and Mycroft takes the opportunity to roll out of bed. Jim cranes his head to see the mechanical magpie landing on the heavy oak end table, having come in through the window. 

 

It hops away as soon as he reaches for it, beating its wings a few more times to cross the room, stopping only to peck at the dozing black cat curled under the dresser by the door—eliciting an angry meow—before showing itself out.

 

.

 

_ Jim blinks up at Mycroft. The room is foreign, as are a third of his limbs, but Mycroft is ever-so-familiar he greets him on reflex. _

 

_ He doesn’t know why the man looks so stricken at that, but he’s floating on something keeping his mind just a bit cloudy, possibly to do with the surgery, and that’s never happened before but he can’t quite understand why it’s significant right now anyway. _

 

_ He throws his arms around Mycroft’s neck, and pulls him down for a kiss. _

 

_ The man stiffens as their lips meet, but a second later he’s responding, hands coming up to hold Jim’s face. He can’t stop smiling. _

 

_ “You came back for me,” Jim says, humming a bit. Mycroft is a rumpled mess. Jim pushes his hair back with a finger. “I’m so happy. Why aren’t you happy?” _

 

_ “I am,” Mycroft says, but he chokes off something that’s part-laugh and part-cry. Jim reaches up to play with his hair again, but Mycroft clasps his hand around his. “I am happy, I’m happy that you’re safe. That you’re you.” _

 

_ “Of course I’m me.” _

 

_ “I love you, Jim.” _

 

_ That’s new. Even in his dreamy, just-woken-up state that’s slowly clearing, he knows that’s significant. That it’s what’s accounting for the warmth blooming in his chest. _

 

_ “And I love you,” he says. “I’ve always loved you.” _

 

_ He hesitates, trying to put those fleeting thoughts into words. _

 

_ “It’s as though… it feels like I was made to love you,” Jim muses. _

 

_ Mycroft laughs. _

 

_ “There’s no such thing,” he says, kissing the hand he’s holding. “There’s no such imperative, there never could have been.” _

 

_ “That’s not what I mean,” Jim says, pushing himself up, and ending up leaning against Mycroft, sitting on what seems like a very small hospital bed. “Just, sometimes, it’s all I want to do.” _

 

_ Mycroft’s arms are around him and his voice is muffled as he speaks, but Jim thinks he hears him say, “me too.” _

 

_. _

 

_ The first thing Eurus sees when she opens her eyes is Jim. _

 

_ He’s all up in her face, eyes barely inches away from her own. _

 

_ “Hey,” he says, purposely obtrusive. _

 

_ She pushes him aside. _

 

_ “Mycroft couldn’t do it,” she says, a question. Jim just cocks his head. _

 

_ “He told me about you,” Eurus says quietly.  _

 

_ Jim can’t help but smile at that.  _

 

_ “No, that’s a lie,” he says with a laugh. “Though I suppose you mistake things you see for things people just tell you.” _

 

_ That makes her frown, and rub the inside of her elbow, where the port is no longer exposed. _

 

_ “Oh,” he says, blinking. “You mean Mr. Holmes.” She nods. _

 

_ Jim takes a step back then. He opens his mouth, but if he meant to say anything he’s changed his mind a moment later when the door behind her opens, and Mycroft steps through. _

 

_ She throws a glance at him over his shoulder. He has several garment bags in hand, a file under his other arm. _

 

_ “Brother mine,” she greets him. “Sentiment suits you.” _

 

_ “Well,” he sighs, more and exhalation than a word. “White does not suit you.” _

 

_ He places the bags on the dresser, then approaches with the files. _

 

_ “It keeps Father was meticulous about keeping up with your records, even while I was not. Birth certificate, school records, bank statements, and so on. It’s all in here,” Mycroft says, handing her the file. “Along with a sizable inheritance that would allow you to pursue whatever it is you want now.” _

 

_ “I just want to do what he would have,” she says, brows crinkled.  _

 

_ “Expand your mind, sister dear, and you of all people should understand that there is no knowing what he might have wanted or meant. But more than that, he never saw you as his design; you’re free to do whatever you wish.” _

 

_ Eurus takes the file. _

 

.

 

_ She disappears for nearly a week after that. On the sixth day, she comes back to Mycroft’s home, with a cat. _

 

_. _

 

Jim yawns, waiting for the kettle to boil, and watches the magpie land on the kitchen island/

 

“How did it go?” he asks.

 

The bird opens its beak, and out comes Eurus’s voice.

 

“I think I’m going to start a company.” A pause. “Gene therapy.”

 

Jim likes Eurus. He didn’t at first, what with the surprise kidnapping and the  _ intrusion _ (the first night back he spent with Mycroft they didn’t  _ do anything _ because Mycroft was so in his head fretting about his sister. And then he spent the next several days treating Jim like fragile porcelain because of  _ Eurus’s dumb prank _ . Though technically it was Jim’s fault for making a joke about how if he broke they could just fix him—the stricken expression on Mycroft’s face was so terribly he never did it again. And eventually such matters were moot because Jim had the bright idea of doing this so he was in charge and set Mycroft’s worries of hurting him aside, after which Jim discovered he actually really enjoyed playing service top), but Eurus had a way of growing on you. Like mold. As little sisters are apt to do.

 

Jim looks up to catch Mycroft’s eye, as he enters the kitchen. 

 

“He had a lot of gifts left to give.”

 

The magpie shakes its feathers out, finished with its report. Jim reaches out to pet it, but it hops away.

 

“Does he not like me?” Jim asks Mycroft, mock hurt when the bird approaches Mycroft of its own volition and places it head under his hand to be pet.

 

“Maybe.”  Jim scowls.

 

Mycroft wraps an arm around Jim’s waist and takes amusement from the fact that he can tuck Jim’s head under his chin. “I like you.”

 

“Not the same,” Jim sulks.

 

Mycroft smiles nonetheless. “I like you a  _ lot _ .”

 

“Really?”

 

“An  _ awful  _ lot.”

 

A long sigh.

 

“I suppose I’ll have to make do with that, then,” Jim says, turning around to face him, to look Mycroft in the eye and see all the love he holds for him in his eyes, all the love Mycroft’s not allowed himself to feel nearly all his life. 

 

These are still quiet, horribly private moments that Mycroft struggles to let happen. Jim doesn’t mind. 

 

The boiling kettle goes unaddressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wow ok it’s done
> 
> lies down
> 
> k imagine if jim and mycroft were about to get it on for the first time and then sherlock called right then just to say hi and wow jim would be _so frustrated_. i mean, he would be like,  
>  sherlock, i’ve literally been trying to get into your brother’s pants like my entire existence. if u fuck this up for me _i will fuck u up_


End file.
